Everyone waiting for Mayweather to announce fight with Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 02/20/2015 - Comments

By Allan Fox: Superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr has the boxing world eating out of his hand right now with everyone waiting for him to officially announce his fight against Manny Pacquiao for May 2nd. According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, the negotiations are complete and the fight is ready to be announced.

The only thing we need is for Mayweather to announce it. It’s anyone’s guess what Mayweather is waiting for. It was initially thought that Mayweather would announce it on Thursday of this week, but that failed to happen.

Fans now think Mayweather will either announce it today on Friday, or he’ll wait until his birthday next week on February 24th before he officially announces it. Whatever the case, it can only help Mayweather to announce the fight as soon as possible, because the delay isn’t going to help him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5OEbJEwRlE&sns=fb

Ideally, the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight needs a good six months of marketing to make it as big as it possibly could be. That obviously isn’t going to happen though due to the long period of time it took for the current negotiations to be completed.

Mayweather and Pacquiao are now looking at just a little over two months to market their fight on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Each day that Mayweather delays in announcing the fight can only hurt his bottom line.

“MayweatherPacquiao (both sides) simply waiting for Floyd to announce. All are calm & say negotiation complete,” Dan Rafael said on his twitter.

The May 2nd fight will likely be the biggest pay-per-view event in the history of boxing. The fight could bring in from $250-300 million in money, which will be split between Mayweather, Pacquiao and their teams. The previous biggest money fights in boxing history were the Mayweather vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight in 2013, which brought in $150 million, and the 2007 battle between Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya fight.

That one hauled in $136 million. The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight could bring in more than double those numbers due to the increased interest, and the likely higher pay-per-view price tag. The fight is rumored to be going for as much as $100-110. The only negative that the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight has going against it is the lack of time to market the fight.

Both the Canelo-Mayweather and De La Hoya-Mayweather fights had many months to market them. They weren’t bouts that had negotiations drag out to within two months of the fight. They were smart to announce those fights as quickly as possible in order to make as much money as possible. It’s unclear what the holdup is for Mayweather now.

It could be that he’s getting older and money is no longer as much of a pressing concern as it was back then, or it might be his pride that is causing him to drag it out this long rather than him doing the smart thing in announcing it as fast as possible. It’s certainly not a good business move for Mayweather to be dragging it out day after day if the fight negotiations are complete. That’s a self-defeating move on Mayweather’s part.



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