By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s close personal adviser Michael Koncz is saying that they’re giving the negotiations until the end of January and then they’re moving on if nothing has happened by then. After that, presumably Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum and Koncz will start looking for their plan-B opponent to match him up against in April.
The guy who’s name has been mentioned the most is WBA light welterweight champion Jessie Vargas.
That would likely mean that Arum would need to take the Pacquiao-Vargas fight to Macau, China because Vargas doesn’t have a large fan base and the pay-per-view numbers on HBO will likely be embarrassingly low like the rumored ones for the Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri fight that took place recently last November.
“We’re waiting for word from Floyd,” Koncz said to sports.tempo.com.ph. “The issue is very sensitive. We’re giving this until the end of the month.”
If Pacquiao, Arum and Koncz does move on without sticking it out to iron out a deal with Mayweather then this would remind one of how Pacquiao’s side moved on during the first negotiations with Mayweather in 2009 after there was an impasse over the blood testing that Mayweather wanted for the fight.
Arum then turned around and matched Pacquiao against one of his fellow Top Rank stable fighters named Joshua Clottey and the result was Pacquiao seeing his pay-per-view numbers drop off dramatically from his previous fight against Miguel Cotto.
I’d be willing to guess that Arum would like to have had a chance to do those negotiations over again, because if they’d stuck it out and agreed on the blood testing for the fight then Pacquiao would have gotten a huge payday along with a 50-50 purse split.
The only way you move on from negotiations as important as that is if you think you can easily restart negotiations at a later time. That didn’t happen, of course, and it was clearly a blow it move for Pacquiao to abandon the negotiations.
Arum and Koncz really need to do whatever they can to try and make the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations work. If that means putting in more time for them then so be it. Setting deadlines for when they’re going to stop negotiating is kind of self-defeating if you ask me, because what’s the rush? Is there a huge urgency for Arum and Pacquiao to move on and start setting up the fight against Vargas?
Putting that fight together will be easy because he’s one of Arum’s stable fighters, so Arum can probably put it together in a day or two and then start marketing it.
Marketing a fight between Pacquiao and Vargas will be a difficult task because this is a match that would likely do no better than the Pacquiao-Algieri fight. That’s why it would be better for Pacquiao, Arum and Koncz to put in more time to try and make the Mayweather fight happen. Walking away from the negotiations would be a really bad move, especially if the alternatives for Pacquiao is a fight against Vargas or the winner of the Brandon Rios vs. Mike Alvarado fight.
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