By Chris Williams: Showtime vice president of Sports Stephen Espinoza feels pretty confident that the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao fight can go ahead. Espinoza says the HBO-Showtime part of the negotiations are about halfway done, and he feels that they’ll be able to complete this very soon in order for the mega-fight between the two stars to go ahead for May 2nd.
It’s possibly going to require for the 36-year-old Filipino star to wait longer than his January 31st deadline that he set, because it might take a little longer than that for HBO and Showtime to complete the deal.
It’s thought that Pacquiao will agree to extend the deadline if he’s made to understand that Showtime and HBO need a little more time.
The contracts could be ready to sign this week under ideal circumstances if HBO and Showtime finish up. But it’s still unclear whether they’ll have their deal done in time to meet Pacquiao’s deadline.
“We’re about halfway there,” Espinoza said via the latimes.com. “How long it takes to get to the finish line is anyone’s guess and I wouldn’t want to speculate. But we are making progress. We’re confident it’s going in the right direction.”
Let’s just hope that Pacquiao doesn’t get stubborn and hold to his self-imposed January 31st deadline as if it were set in stone, because if he does that he’ll only be shooting himself in the foot in the same way he did during the first negotiations with Mayweather in 2009.
That was a royal blow it move by Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum to walk away from the negotiations that would have given Pacquiao a 50-50 split of the loot. Pacquiao probably lost $100 million or more with that move. If he walks away from this one, he’ll lose perhaps $80 million or more. He would then be looking to fight for $20 million, likely against Jessie Vargas, one of Arum’s fighters.
The holdup in the negotiations between Mayweather and Pacquiao isn’t on Mayweather’s part. It’s HBO and Showtime stuck trying to work out a deal. Mayweather isn’t going to sign off on a contract without HBO and Showtime having decided how they’re going to televise this joint pay-per-view telecast. But for some reason, Pacquiao seems to be in a big hurry for Mayweather to agree to something that he has no power to agree to until the big cable giant’s finish their part of the negotiations.
What would be a tragedy is if Pacquiao walks away from the negotiations just because Showtime and HBO need more time than his January 31st deadline. You’d hate to see Pacquiao walk away, but coming events cast their shadows before. If Pacquiao walked away once from negotiations with Mayweather, he could follow the same pattern and do it again. Last time Pacquiao pulled out of the negotiations with Mayweather, he fought Joshua Clottey in 2010. Jessie Vargas could be the 2015 version of Clottey with the fight bringing in less than spectacular PPV buys from Macau, China. One would assume that’s where Arum would take the Pacquiao-Vargas fight, because it’s not a fight that would sell in the U.S.
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