Stephen Espinoza: Arum isn’t being truthful, there is no contract awaiting Mayweather’s signature

By Boxing News - 01/24/2015 - Comments

floyd02By Chris Williams: Stephen Espinoza, the vice president of sports for Showtime, says that Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank isn’t telling the truth about there being a contract that they’re waiting on Floyd Mayweather Jr to sign.

Arum and Pacquiao have both been talking about how they’ve agreed to the contract proposals for a Mayweather. They’ve said repeatedly that they’re waiting for Mayweather to sign off on his part of the contract. Well, Espinoza said that there is no contract waiting for Mayweather.

Espinoza says that there are still contract issues that have yet to be solved, and that’s why there’s no forward movement. There was never anything settled for Arum and Pacquiao to have supposedly agreed on, which is why Espinoza is saying that Arum isn’t being truthful. The negotiations haven’t been settled. It’s not a situation where everything has been agreed and signed off on one side. It hasn’t gotten to that point yet.

“Floyd isn’t holding anything up. No one is waiting on Floyd to rubber stamp or sign anything. Arum isn’t being truthful on this and he knows it. There is no contract that is awaiting Floyd’s signature and Bob Arum knows that,” Espinoza said via Fighthype.com.

If what Espinoza is saying is true, then it’s unclear why Arum, Pacquiao and Michael Koncz are saying that they’ve agreed on the contract. If they did, then they agreed in part to an unfinished contract, and it makes no sense in asking Mayweather to agree to something that still is an unfinished piece of work. If Arum and Pacquiao did sign a contract, it would be interesting to know who created the contract.

“We’ve made what I call significant progress, but there’s still open issues which have to be resolved,” Espinoza said. “So there’s no agreement or closed deal or contract or anybody signing off on anything. Neither CBS or Showtime or Haymon, or even HBO really for that matter, have yet agreed.”

There is it. The contract is still being worked on, but there’s no agreement on anything, other than the stuff that Arum is talking about. CBS, Showtime and HBO still haven’t agreed to is, so we have no fight.

Mayweather is getting the blame for something that never existed in the first place, and it’s very strange that Arum is taking the stance of putting pressure on Mayweather when there are still issues that need to be revolved between Mayweather and Pacquiao, as well as HBO, CBS and Showtime.



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