Arum: Only two issues remaining in Mayweather vs. Pacquiao negotiations

By Boxing News - 02/05/2015 - Comments

floyd7By Chris Williams: The issues related to HBO and Showtime has finally been settled, according to Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. Arum says that HBO and Showtime have agreed to how they plan on broadcasting the May 2nd fight.

That leaves only two issues remaining of the four that had held up the fight. Arum isn’t saying what those last two remaining issues are, but they’re currently being worked out at this time.

Mayweather sent an Instagram earlier today, saying that he was meeting with Pacquiao to work out the details of their fight for 5/2. Mayweather said that it’ not his team that is holding up the negotiations.

“We had four issues and we resolved two,” said Arum via the Associated Press at ABCnews.co.com. “Now we’re working on resolving the other two. Unless something else comes up at the last minute, that’s what my take is. The remaining issues are obviously important to the participants, and are things we have to work out.”

It’s Arum saying that HBO and Showtime has worked out the deal, not both networks. It’s also Arum saying that there are only two issues remaining of the original four. It’s quite possible that Mayweather’s team see things differently from Arum, so it’s quite possible that the negotiations still have a ways to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW5fDrEz5eQ

Is it a good thing that Arum is saying that the negotiations only have two issues remaining? Yes, but you’ve got to see this as a situation where Arum is doing the talking rather than Mayweather or his adviser Al Haymon.

Until you see Mayweather announcing the fight or saying he’s going in another direction, you’ve got to stay patient and wait. Mayweather is the A-side here, and he’s the one who will speak when he’s ready to announce fight or give a progress report.

Here’s what Dan Rafael of ESPN said on his twitter several minutes ago about Bob Arum:

“Arum told AP the networks made deal for Mayweather-Pacquiao. 1 network told me just now ‘not true.’ Waiting to hear back from the other. BOTH networks have told me in the past half hour that, no, they DO NOT have #Mayweather-Pacquiao broadcast deal, regardless of Arum comments. 3rd network source just said there’s no Showtime/HBO deal yet on Mayweather-Pacquiao despite Arum’s comments to AP. “Nothing has changed.”

The remaining two issues that Arum speaks of could be small and something that can be negotiated successfully between the two superstar fighters by as early as Friday, or they could be huge problems that will require weeks of negotiations.

It’s also possible that these items might be big enough problems to where the fight might not get made. We can’t really know at this point, because Haymon, Mayweather, Pacquiao, Michael Koncz and Arum aren’t going to reveal to the media what these last two issues are. What we do know is that there’s so much money on the line for both fighters that they have an extra incentive to finish out the negotiations this time.

Neither fighter has much in the way of options for plan-B opponents if their fight negotiations fail to work out. To be sure, Mayweather has the better options with potential fights against Miguel Cotto, Danny Garcia or Amir Khan, but even those fights are bouts that will likely bring in just a little more money than Mayweather’s past two fights against Marcos Maidana.

Pacquiao’s options are positively horrible with him looking at potential fights against the likes of Jessie Vargas or someone like Brandon Rios. There’s really no option at all for Pacquiao if the Mayweather fight doesn’t take place.



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