By Thomas Hanson: It seems as if the negotiations between Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao are still alive and well. In fact, De La Hoya is expecting to make an announcement about the fight next week, according to SI.com. De La Hoya said that he wants the fight. However, it remains to seen whether he wants it bad enough to change his original purse split offer of 70-30 to something more to Pacquiao’s liking, which has steadfastly remained stuck at 60-40. Last week, Pacquiao walked away from the bargaining process when he saw that De La Hoya wasn’t making any movements on his original 70-30 offer.

However, it may possibly be that Pacquiao is reconsidering taking the offer, because it would still easily give him the biggest payday of his career, maybe as much by 4X. That’s obviously something that has to be on his mind, because it’s not every day that Pacquiao gets a payday which will likely end with him making $15 million. Although it will likely not be quite as much as the $22 million that Mayweather received, it will still come close enough. Mayweather, by the way, also was given a 70-30 purse split by De La Hoya, and had no problems taking it.

After Pacquiao walked away from De La Hoya’s offer last week, leaving him without an opponent once again, De La Hoya looked at possible fights against Sergio Mora, Vernon Forrest, and Ricky Hatton, to name but a few. However, as good as Mora and Forrest are as fighters, neither would seem to be a big enough star on their own to bring in the huge PPV numbers that De La Hoya would be looking for in his last fight. Also a problem about each of them, however, is that De La Hoya would have to wait awhile until they fight on September 13th to find out who his opponent would be.

Most boxing fans feel that it will be Forrest, which would be fine, except that he’s 36 and it would turn a potential De La Hoya-Forrest bout into an old timer’s bout. That’s probably not what De La Hoya was looking for in his last supposed fight. Although I doubt that this is his last fight, however, because I can see him coming back for a real old timer’s bout a year from now against Felix Trinidad or possibly Fernando Vargas, if either of them can get in shape for such a fight.

As for Hatton, he’s already busy with a fight against Paulie Malignaggi in November, which is too close to De La Hoya’s December 6th date that he has laid out for his last fight. The natural thing for De La Hoya to do, obviously, would be for him to push back the date to February for March, that way Hatton would be able to make the fight. De La Hoya doesn’t want to do that for some reason. With only a short amount of time to work with and very few opponents available, Pacquiao looks to be the best – read: only – option available for a truly huge mega-fight.

A fight with welterweight champion Antonio Margarito would fit the bill, as would a fight against Miguel Cotto, but De La Hoya isn’t interested in fighting Margarito for obvious reasons, and Cotto is coming off a terrible beating from Margarito. De La Hoya kind of wants to finish his career with a victory, hence his choice of the ex-super featherweight Pacquiao as a potential opponent. With a 25 lb weight advantage and five in height advantage, how can De La Hoya go wrong in this fight? Is it fair? No, of course not, but if fans are interested in paying for it, that’s their problem.