By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum have been saying that they’ve agreed to their side of the contract and that they’re only waiting for Floyd Mayweather Jr to agree to his side of the contract. In the meantime, Showtime’s vice president of sports Stephen Espinoza is saying that there is no contract, and that they’re still negotiating the proposal points.
In other words, there’s nothing for Mayweather to sign, because there still outstanding issues that need to be negotiated. Dan Rafael of ESPN says that the two sides have a deal memo that still needs to be agreed on before it even gets to the contract stage of the negotiations.
“Relax about this is their contract, isn’t there a Manny-Floyd contract. There’s a deal memo. IF pts agreed to then it goes to full contract,” Rafael said on his twitter. ”So is there TECHNICALLY a Floyd-Manny contract? No. Is there paperwork going back/forth between sides trying to finalize it? ABSOLUTELY yes. Deal memo basically pt by pt of major stuff. IF they agree the lawyers put it in all official lingo w/ all details in a long form agreement.”
If Pacquiao and Mayweather have a deal memo that they’re passing back and forth, it begs the question about why Arum and Pacquiao keep telling Mayweather to sign the contract. If Mayweather signs the deal memo, which I don’t think is a substitute for a contract, it’s still not going to make the fight a done deal. It’s just paperwork that is going back and forth between the two fighters and not a legal contract for the fight.
It’s kind of disturbing when you hear Pacquiao telling Mayweather to sign a contract that still doesn’t even exist. Did Pacquiao sign a deal memo thinking it was a contract or is he just parroting what his promoter Arum is saying in order to make Mayweather look bad in the eyes of the boxing public?
Pacquiao may have agreed to some items on the deal memo, but if there’s no contract yet then Mayweather surely can’t sign anything in order to make the fight a done deal. If it’s still at the deal memo stage, then the negotiations are still going on and there is nothing for Mayweather to sign. But it’s just so troubling that Pacquiao keeps telling Mayweather to sign the contract when it’s physically impossible for him to sign a contract that doesn’t exist.
It’s unclear why Pacquiao isn’t saying to the public that Mayweather needs to agree to the deal memo points so that they can get to the contract stage. It would be nice if Pacquiao pointed out that HBO and Showtime are still negotiating a deal for the fight to shown jointly.
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