By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach says it’s a waste of time for his fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) to be waiting around to try and get a fight against the biggest arguably the biggest money maker in the sport of boxing in WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs).
Roach says they’ve done all they could to try and make a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight take place, but it never did.
“We can’t waste our time waiting for him. We’ve done everything we could to make that fight happen,” Roach said via Skysports.com.
It’s a fight that obviously could have taken place 3 times already. Mayweather attempted to fight Pacquiao in 2010, but they couldn’t agree on the random blood testing for the fight. Pacquiao ended up fighting Joshua Clottey instead. Mayweather later offered Pacquiao $40 million to take the fight, but he reportedly wanted a 50-50 deal.
Mayweather was interested in fighting Pacquiao before Mayweather’s jail stint in 2012. But Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum was talking about needing a stadium built, and he also said Pacquiao had a slow healing cut.
Instead of facing Mayweather in 2012, Pacquiao fought Juan Manuel Marquez and was knocked out by him.
“The possibility to fight with him, you know, the question is not for us,” Pacquiao said. “It’s for them because any time we are willing to fight, any time. I think that question belongs to them, their camp.”
Mayweather said recently that he would consider fighting Pacquiao once he’s no longer with Bob Arum. The chances of that happening now are slim and none with Pacquiao re-upping with Arum and Top Rank for another 2 years until the end of 2016.
It’s interesting that Pacquiao re-signed with Top Rank rather than try and get a fight against Mayweather once his contract with Top Rank expired. That would have been the golden opportunity for Pacquiao to get the fight.
Pacquiao and Roach have been pretty quiet about Mayweather lately. Just now they’re talking about him. Some boxing fans may see this as a case of them name-dropping Mayweather’s name to try and drive interest in their fight against Chris Algieri on November 22nd. What better way to create interest in a fight that is perceived as a mismatch like the Pacquiao-Algieri fight then by mentioning Mayweather’s name as a future opponent?
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