Arum thinks Pacquiao deserves a bigger purse split than 60-40 against Mayweather for rematch

By Boxing News - 05/06/2015 - Comments

Ellerbe and ArumBy Chris Williams: It’s generally understood that Manny Pacquiao looked poor last Saturday night in getting schooled by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a fight that many fans scored 9 rounds to 3 in Mayweather’s favor. This was Mayweather fighting in 1st gear pretty much most of the fight, and only rarely shifting into 2nd gear to nail Pacquiao with combinations.

In a word, Pacquiao was exposed. There’s now talk of a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao in 2016 after Pacquiao recovers from his shoulder surgery. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum believes that there is no reason why Pacquiao shouldn’t get a bigger purse split than the original 60-40 split he received for their fight last Saturday night.

Arum reasons that Mayweather won’t be able to make the kind of money fighting anyone else but Pacquiao. For that reason, Arum thinks Pacquiao deserves a bigger split than 60-40. In other words, Arum thinks Pacquiao should be rewarded for the loss to Mayweather instead of downgraded to a lower purse split, which is what you would normally think would happen in a rematch between the conqueror and his victim.

“The fact that he [Mayweather] won the fight, what does that mean? The two of them together created such a bonanza — numbers we’ve never seen before — and without Manny, who could Floyd create a bonanza like that with?” Arum said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “And without Mayweather, who is Manny going to fight to create as much money? Maybe we should get more than the 40 percent. They need each other to create this kind of money.”

So Arum figures Pacquiao deserves better than a 60-40 purse split for the rematch with Mayweather, eh? That’s pretty bold on Arum’s part, and I don’t know how well that will fly with Mayweather. Pacquiao already has a flawed ring record of 57-6-2, 38 KOs compared to Mayweather’s 48-0.

Pacquiao also didn’t help himself any by coming into the Mayweather fight with a shoulder injury that he suffered during training camp and failed to disclose the information to the Nevada State Athletic Commission until the day of the fight. Pacquiao has taken a lot of heat for him not revealing the injury to the boxing public so that they could decide whether they would want to spend their hard-earned money on purchasing tickets or buying the fight on pay-per-view.

I think of boxing fans would have taken a pass on buying the fight if they knew that Pacquiao was injured going into it. We’re not even talking about the gamblers who bet large sums of money on Pacquiao thinking he would be ready for the fight and in shape to beat Mayweather. After all that, Arum figures that Pacquiao deserves better than a 60-40 split? I think that’s a pipe dream on Arum’s part, but it shows you how difficult, if not impossible, it will be for Mayweather and Pacquiao’s management to negotiate a second fight. If Arum comes into the second negotiations with Mayweather thinking that Pacquiao deserves a deal no worse than 50-50 or 55-45, I don’t see the fight getting made. If it was me who was negotiating on Mayweather’s side, I would walk away from the negotiations if Arum failed to accept a deal no better than 70-30.

I think Pacquiao’s side aren’t in the position to ask for the same or a better split of the revenue in the rematch due to his loss and him coming into the fight with an injury that he didn’t tell the Commission about until the day of the fight. If Arum doesn’t want to accept the 70-30 deal, then he can go ahead and march off into the sunset and continue matching Pacquiao against his Top Rank stable fighters Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley over and over again for the remainder of what’s left of Pacquiao’s career.



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