By Chris Williams: Former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi says the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao negotiations are almost done, and he says the fight will definitely be taking place. Malignaggi’s inside source says that everything has pretty much been agreed on at this point with Pacquiao saying yes to Mayweather’s negotiating demands.
Malignaggi feels that Pacquiao really blew it by not accepting the random blood testing during their first negotiations in 2009.
Pacquiao had a chance to get a 50-50 purse split for that fight which would have given the Filipino fighter a tremendous payday for the fight. But he failed to agree to Mayweather’s negotiating request, and it cost Pacquiao the fight.
To Malignaggi, he sees this as a case of Pacquiao showing quilt by not agreeing to the testing. Malignaggi doesn’t think the fight would have been competitive back then, and he still sees it as a one-sided affair now with Mayweather easily winning.
“The fights going to happen. Someone on the inside said the fight is pretty much close to being done,” Malignaggi said via esnewreporting.com. “Pac, I was told, has agreed to a lot of Floyd’s demands. I think Pacquiao put himself in this position in the first negotiations five years ago when it was a 50-50 negotiation. Everything was split down the middle. He [Pacquiao] had everything he wanted, and then he blew it over the drug testing. That’s fishy. Not only fishy, but how are you going to come back now and take a 60-40 deal, and among else take the random drug testing. You could have just took it five years ago and you would have gotten a 50-50 deal. To me that’s an admission of guilt.”
It is disappointing that the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight didn’t get made in 2009, because it would have been a better fight than it is now. Additionally, Pacquiao would have gotten a much bigger split at 50-50 compared to the 60-40 deal that he’s rumored to be getting now.
Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum must have been under the impression that they could pick up the Mayweather negotiations at a later date and get the same 50-50 deal. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way, as Pacquiao’s fortunes have turned for the worse with him losing twice and his pay-per-view numbers dropping off dramatically due to the poor match-making Arum has been doing for him in terms of failing to match him against interesting opponents.
“I think it’s a fight that gets made. I don’t see the fight being competitive. I think Floyd feels him out in the first few rounds like he does with a lot of his opponents,” Malignaggi said. “Pacquiao being the smaller man, he’s going to end up getting walked down by Floyd. You’ll see Floyd walking him down like he did with Zab Judah. I think Pacquiao does a lot of needless movement and useless movement with no point at all. I think it starts off with some close rounds but then ends with a whimper with Floyd dominating. People will say the fight was a dud. It was an illusion. I think Manny was cheating. He was something he wasn’t. Now we’re going to see what he really was. Maybe a late stoppage [for Mayweather].”
I don’t disagree with Malignaggi on his belief that Mayweather will dominate this fight. I see him figuring out Pacquiao early just like he did with Marcos Maidana, and once he has him figured out, he’ll start schooling Pacquiao by picking him off with shots. I don’t know if Mayweather will be able to walk Pacquiao down, because the Filipino fighter will likely be the one coming forward all the time. But I see Mayweather timing Pacquiao and totally dominating him from rounds 4 through 12.
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