By Manuel Perez: According to an interview on Fighthype, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is saying that he’ll never take a 50-50 purse split with Manny Pacquiao, and that if Manny wants a fight with him he’s going to have to take less than that to get a fight.
I commend Mayweather for standing up and dictating the terms with Pacquiao, because it’s clear with the huge money that HBO is giving Mayweather for his next fight against on July 18th against Juan Manuel Marquez, a reported $15 million, that Mayweather Jr. is probably the more popular fighter with HBO.
Mayweather did better PPV numbers for both his fights against Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya compared to what Pacquiao did against the same fighters. It wasn’t even close with the De La Hoya fight with Mayweather getting 2.5 million buys compared to Pacquiao’s 1.24 million.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum doesn’t agree that Mayweather should get the bigger share of the purse split, and according to Philstar.com, Arum thinks that even 50% for Mayweather is “nonsense.” That’s too bad that Arum feels that way, because that pretty much means that Pacquiao will never fight Mayweather then, because unless he takes the smaller cut, which he should be taking because he’s not as popular as Mayweather in the United States, the fight will never come off.
Who knows? Maybe it’s for the best, really. Look at it this way, if Pacquiao fights Mayweather it’s going to be a one-sided fight with Mayweather literally destroying the smaller, weaker Pacquiao, giving him a boxing lesson and ultimately knocking him out in the same manner that Mayweather knocked out Ricky Hatton in December 2007.
Even getting to a fight would be problems in itself, because Pacquiao and his management team would likely insist on Mayweather coming in at a ridiculous catch weight of 140 to 142, so that Mayweather would be weight drained enough to where Pacquiao would have a fighting chance.
It wouldn’t matter, because Mayweather would beat Pacquiao black and blue no matter what catch weight scheme that Pacquiao and his team dreamed up for Mayweather. However, the problem is Mayweather would never agree to some silly catch weight ploy like that in the first place, and so the fight would end up not happening anyway unless Pacquiao gave some ground and agreed to fight at 144 to 147.
I doubt he would. Pacquiao has to realize that he’s not just fighting any opponent. He would be fighting perhaops the best fighter in the world in Mayweather, and so he should have to take much less money than Floyd.
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