Stephen Espinoza talks Mayweather-Pacquiao: “Nobody is ducking anybody”

By Boxing News - 01/20/2015 - Comments

floyd6002By Chris Williams: In what has to be seen as a positive sign that the negotiations are still in process, Stephen Espinoza, the vice president of Showtime Sports, says that neither Manny Pacquiao nor Floyd Mayweather Jr are ducking anybody. Espinoza says that there issues that still need to be pounded out in the negotiation process.

”Nobody is “ducking” anybody. There are legitimate business issues to resolve. Doesn’t mean that either side is trying to avoid the fight,” Espinoza said on his twitter page.

This explains a lot. Espinoza knows what’s happening in the negotiations between Mayweather and Pacquiao, and he obviously knows how Mayweather wants the fight. The fact that there are serious issues being worked out shows Mayweather’s maturity and his intelligence as a business man.

You wouldn’t expect for Mayweather to cave in on the negotiations just because Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum are saying that they’ve agreed on their side of the negotiations.

Just because they like what they see doesn’t mean that Mayweather has to follow after them in goose stepping fashion. Mayweather will agree once the contract terms look right and not until then. I wouldn’t expect Pacquiao and Arum to do any different themselves.

It is good news that Espinoza is saying that the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations are still being resolved because a lot of boxing fans and writers are under the impression that the fight won’t be taking place now after the Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight negotiations fell apart after Canelo pulled out of the negotiations.

Fans/writers think Mayweather will now automatically be looking to fight Cotto as his plan-B alternative, which is probably the furthest thing to the truth. Mayweather would only seek to fight Cotto if he’s exhausted his efforts at making the bigger fight against Pacquiao.

Mayweather knows that the fight that fans want to see is the Pacquiao fight, and he knows that he’ll make a lot more money against Pacquiao than he would against Cotto. He also knows what he sees in Pacquiao in terms of him being a short fighter who is easy to hit and who moves around the ring needlessly in wasting energy without reason. Mayweather knows that a fight against Pacquiao is a win over him. That’s why he wants to take the fight to add his scalp to his resume.

I’m not sure that the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations will be complete by the end of January, but it’ll be on Pacquiao if he pulls out of the negotiation process just because the deal isn’t fully hashed out.



Comments are closed.