By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao has reportedly signed his portion of the contract for his mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, according to Dan Rafael. That’s what Rafael was told by Pacquiao’s people. They’re now waiting for Mayweather to sign his portion of the contract.
It’s unknown if Pacquiao has actually signed a contract or if this is more of the same situation we’ve seen weeks ago with Pacquiao saying he’s agreed to everything and telling Mayweather to sign the contract, which still didn’t exist at that time.
The only way of knowing whether the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is a done deal is when Mayweather announces it; otherwise you have to take what is being said about contracts having been signed with a grain of salt. It sounds nice, but we’re only hearing it from one side and not from Mayweather’s side.
“What I’m told by the Pacquiao group, they have put pen to paper and signed the contract that they say have been vetted by Floyd Mayweather,” Rafael said on ESPN. “Their attorneys have signed off on it and they signed on the dotted line. But that’s not a huge surprise because has said for weeks that he agreed to everything. So now I guess they’ve got they’ve got the language in order that Mayweather has agreed with and that Pacquiao, Top Rank and [Bob] Arum were okay with that they signed on the dotted line. It’s down to Mayweather to sign the agreement. That hasn’t happened. There have been claims in the media, in particular overseas, that the fight is done. That’s just not the case. They’re close. It’s basically down to when Mayweather will put pen to paper,” Rafael said.
If there is a contract has been signed for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, then that definitely suggests that Mayweather and his adviser Al Haymon has agreed to the negotiating points in the deal memo that has been getting passed around between the two fighters. However, even if Pacquiao does sign a contract for the Mayweather fight, it doesn’t mean that Mayweather will sign the contract.
If there’s something else that comes up in the next few days, it could further hold up the negotiations until the issue is taken care of. Mayweather has good people working for him is his management team, so there’s not going to be something that slips by them.
With the 60-40 purse split that Pacquiao is getting for the fight, Mayweather is already giving Pacquiao a huge gift in the eyes of a lot of the fans. That’s a split that is a lot closer than what many boxing fans thought it was going to be.
Many fans were thinking that Pacquiao would get no better than 70-30 at best due to his smaller pay-per-view numbers and his five defeats on his resume. Some fans even thought that an 80-20 deal in favor of Mayweather would have been a fair deal.
I have no argument with Pacquiao getting 30 percent of the loot for the fight, but Mayweather was very kind in giving Pacquiao 40 percent. After giving Pacquiao a cut that huge, I’m not surprised that Mayweather and his management are making sure that they make sure that the rest of the contract is to their liking.
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