By Manuel Perez: Up until now, Manny Pacquiao’s trainer has done a great job of making it seem as if it’s Floyd Mayweather Jr., who’s the one that will ultimately make it difficult for a future Pacquiao vs. Mayweather bout to take place.
However, I think it’s the exact opposite if you ask me. Let’s look at this. Pacquiao and his team want to take the lion’s share of a 65-35 purse split with Mayweather, which sounds crazy given Floyd’s immense popularity with boxing fans.
Ricky Hatton was able to get a 52-48 purse split with Pacquiao taking the slightly higher cut of the revenue. When you look at the numbers that were given to Hatton and then look at what’s being offered to Mayweather, it leaves you with one impression that Pacquiao and his team don’t really want to make the fight with Mayweather for some reason.
Oh, I can understand Pacquiao and his promotional team wanting to take advantage of his wins over Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton to get a slightly larger cut of the PPV revenue, but not one as big as 65-35 or even 60-40.
Mayweather has also beaten both De La Hoya and Hatton, and while he may not have done it as quick and as convincingly as Pacquiao did, Mayweather fought a slightly better version of both fighters. Mayweather beat them and took them fight out of them and left them for Pacquiao pick over.
It’s disappointing to see how Pacquiao is being seen as if he ruined both De La Hoya and Hatton when in reality, it was Mayweather who probably did the ruining more so than Pacquiao. Another thing that leaves me with the impression that Pacquiao and his team don’t want him to fight Mayweather is this whole business about catch weights.
I presume that if Mayweather does eventually fight Pacquiao he’ll probably have to come in between 142-144 just to get the fight. The weight will probably be tough for Mayweather to get down to, leaving him weakened for the fight with Pacquiao.
Mayweather knows this, which is why I think he’ll not go for then idea and threaten to walk away. I seriously doubt that Pacquiao’s side will give in either, and so there’s a good chance that we will never see a Pacquiao-Mayweather bout in the future. I could care less about whether Pacquiao ever fights Mayweather at all, because the bout will probably be a boring one.
But I wish Pacquiao’s team would just come out in the open and say that they’re not interested in seeing Pacquiao face Mayweather so that we can get this whole Pacquiao-Mayweather business over and done with. There’s no reason that Mayweather should have to take less money than Pacquiao, because after all, Mayweather is the fighter that is unbeaten.
He’s also the former number #1 pound for pound fighter and before Mayweather retired from boxing in 2007, he was perhaps the biggest PPV attraction in the sport. In looking at the interest that is developing in Mayweather’s fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, a fight that is still two months away, it’s clear how popular Mayweather is in the sport.
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