Pacquiao still wants rematch with Mayweather in 2016

By Boxing News - 08/08/2015 - Comments

Image: Pacquiao still wants rematch with Mayweather in 2016By Chris Williams: While Floyd Mayweather Jr. is talking about retiring after his next fight on September 12th in his fight against Andre Berto, former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao is insisting that he still wants a rematch with Mayweather in 2016 so that he can avenge what he feels was a controversial 12 round decision loss last May at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pacquiao still believes that he should have been given the decision over Mayweather because he was taking the fight to him and was the one doing all the work. However, if Mayweather is to change his decision about retiring then it’s going to take the action of Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank to try and talk Mayweather out of it by reminding him that they would like a rematch with him.

“I want to fight Mayweather in a rematch. I’ll be ready for that mentally and physically next year. I’ll show a better performance against him than in the first encounter,” Pacquiao said via Fightnews.com.

Boxing fans will no doubt want to know what guarantee that they’ll have that Pacquiao will come into the fight 100% this time rather than coming into the fight with a dinged up shoulder. If fans don’t trust whether he’ll come into the fight healthy or not, they may not want to purchase the fight a second time. If they don’t purchase it then Mayweather isn’t going to give Pacquiao the fight that he wants.

Right now, it’s up to Mayweather whether he wants to fight Pacquiao a second time, and he’s already on record saying that he’s not going to fight him a second time because he feels he’s a sore loser due to his failing to admit that he lost the fight. Mayweather also isn’t happy about the injury excuse that Pacquiao came up with afterwards in which he brought up his shoulder problem. Mayweather thinks that Pacquiao mentioned the injury so that fans wouldn’t see him as having been beaten.

It’s probably also going to take Pacquiao receiving a smaller cut of the revenue for him to get a second fight with Mayweather. There will obviously be fewer boxing fans purchasing the fight a second time due to many of them not being happy with the way the fight was fought. Pacquiao fought in a listless manner, as if he were afraid to mix it up with Mayweather after taking some hard right hands in the first two rounds of the fight.

Pacquiao’s revelation after the fight that he fought with an injured right shoulder problem didn’t help matters, because it gave the impression to some boxing fans that his main concern was getting his paycheck and not about him making sure he was 100% ready for the fight. Additionally, Pacquiao made himself look disengaged from reality with his insistence that he won the fight. All you had to look at HBO analyst Max Kellerman’s face during his interview of Pacquiao to realize how confused Pacquiao appeared after the fight.

“He [Mayweather] was running away all the time. I was making the fight by stalking him and believe that I deserved a victory,” Pacquiao said.

The problem with Pacquiao’s belief that he should have been given the decision against Mayweather is that it’s not echoed by the judged and the vast majority of the boxing fans that saw the fight. They all felt that Mayweather beat Pacquiao and made him look bad. As far as I can tell, only a small minority of fans believed that Pacquiao deserved the win.

Mayweather was not running all the time. He was mostly standing in the pocket in the center of the ring and against the ropes. From time to time, Mayweather would move off the ropes to reposition himself back in the center of the ring. But for the past part, he was standing directly in front of Pacquiao, jabbing him and nailing him with repeated right hands. A fighter that runs is someone that moves constantly around the ring without stopping to set his feet. Mayweather wasn’t doing that. He was standing in one place 90% of the tie and only moving when he was trapped against the rope for a long spell. It would have been crazy for Mayweather to stay in one spot so that he could give Pacquiao a handicap for him to beat him. That would have been insane for Mayweather to fight like that.

It’s probably going to take a lot of wheeling and dealing by Arum to get Mayweather to change his mind about retiring from the sport and giving Pacquiao a rematch. With the way that Mayweather is talking, I don’t think he’s motivated to face Pacquiao a second time. That doesn’t mean that Mayweather won’t change his mind about fighting the Filipino a second time. But I think it might require that Arum float the idea of Pacquiao accepting a much smaller cut the cash revenue. Instead of Pacquiao getting a 60-40 deal, it might take Pacquiao agreeing to a 70-30 or 75-25 cut for Mayweather to agree to give him a second fight. Personally, I think Mayweather won’t agree to fight Pacquiao again unless he agrees to a 75-25 deal. That would still give Pacquiao a huge payday, and he’d get his chance to avenge his loss. That would be the most important thing because he wants the opportunity to show boxing fans that the loss wasn’t legit. The only way Pacquiao can do that is by fighting Mayweather a second time. Mayweather probably won’t like the idea of not making over $200 million for the fight like he did in their fight last May. But with Pacquiao accepting a much smaller splice of the financial pie, Mayweather can make that huge payday once again. It’s a win-win situation for Pacquiao. He gets another big payday that he wouldn’t be getting if he fought someone else, and he’d have an opportunity to try and beat Mayweather the second time around. If Pacquiao’s shoulder injury did limit him to 60% of what he normally is, then this would be his chance to prove that theory by taking the smaller cut of the revenue by agreeing to a 75-25 split, and then showing fans what he can do when he’s completely 100% healthy against Mayweather.



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