By Chris Williams: Michael Koncz, the adviser for Manny Pacquiao, is reportedly shutting down giving quotes to the media for updates on the latest boxing news about the Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr fight negotiations.
Up until recently, Koncz has always been good about speaking his mind about what’s going on with the negotiations and giving his own interpretation of what’s happening.
Granted, Koncz tends to side with his fighter Pacquiao when giving the scoop, but that’s expected. But now Koncz has suddenly gone quiet and is giving the ‘no comment’ quotes, which are totally useless to the media.
“I have been getting numerous calls from reporters over the past couple of days asking what are the latest developments in the Manny and Floyd saga and my official reply is no comment,” Koncz said via Philboxing.com.
The first thing you’ve got to think of when you see Koncz is no longer giving out information on the negotiations is that he was possibly told by higher ups such as Bob Arum of Top Rank that he needs to stay on the down low when it comes to giving it out information. After all, Koncz was talking recently about how he didn’t feel that it was necessary for Pacquiao and Mayweather to go on a worldwide promotional tour to market their May 2nd fight.
Koncz also said that they would like to limit their promotional tour of the U.S to just one or two cities. That information might not have jibed with what Arum or more importantly Mayweather wants from the marketing of the fight. After all, Mayweather is known for doing things in a big way, and he’s a very smart and wealthy businessman.
With Koncz saying that he feels that a worldwide tour isn’t necessary, he could have been potentially causing a rift in the negotiations that they don’t need. The last thing Pacquiao and Koncz needs is to be causing more negotiation headaches.
The worldwide tour, tour of the U.S and the HBO and Showtime 24/7 and Total Access specials will be up to Arum, Mayweather and Pacquiao. Having an adviser talking about these things is probably not a good thing.
Koncz said “that we should spend less time giving information and stories to the media and devote our time, energies and efforts in coming to an amenable resolution of the outstanding issues if possible.”
I don’t see there being a problem in giving interviews with the media. The problem starts when you have someone giving out information about subjects that they’re not in the position of power.
If Koncz is talking about wanting to limit the promotional tours in the U.S and worldwide, then he needs to make sure that Arum, Pacquiao and Mayweather are all on board with this before he talks about it. If not, then he’s potentially starting friction when they normally wouldn’t be any.
As Pacquiao’s adviser, Koncz probably should have realized that Mayweather is a marketing wiz when it comes to making his fights huge events. He’s probably not going to want to do the marketing for his fight against Pacquiao on the cheap by saving money by not going on a worldwide tour and not hitting at least half dozen major cities in the United States to promote the fight.
Look at the huge tour that Mayweather had for his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. That was an 11-city tour and that fight brought in 2.2 million pay-per-view buys.
If Mayweather had taken the same attitude that Koncz has about his fight against Canelo selling itself, the I bet his fight wouldn’t have done nearly as well. But the genius up Mayweather is that he realized he couldn’t do it on the cheap and that he needed to market the fight in a major way to make it the huge success that it resulted in.
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