By Manuel Perez: Floyd Mayweather Jr. made it abundantly clear yesterday in a conference call that Manny Pacquiao would have to take less than a 50-50 purse split if he wants to get in the ring with Mayweather. Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum aren’t going to accept less than a 50-50 split, so the chances of a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight are pretty much nil at this point.
Pacquiao needs to get it through his thick head that he’s not the reason why his fights with Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton were such huge sellers, and come down off his high horse and gratefully accept the 40% or whatever offer that Mayweather gives to him.
Pacquiao was never a huge PPV seller in fights against David Diaz and some of his other bouts against old timers. The only fights that he did really well in were when he went up against De La Hoya and Hatton, two of the biggest stars of the sport. I’d be willing to bet that almost anyone put in with those two guys would turn into a huge PPV fight.
Pacquiao was beaten by Erik Morales and should have been beaten twice by Juan Manuel Marquez, Mayweather points out in the conference call. How on earth does Pacquiao think he deserves to get the same cash as Mayweather when his record and past fights are spotty and filled with questionable and controversial decisions?
Pacquiao needs to grovel a little and be thankful that Mayweather wants to fight him at all. How can a fighter with questionable wins over Marquez and a recent loss to Erik Morales ask to get the same amount as Mayweather. I could see it if Pacquiao has an unbeaten record and had faced the best fighters in the super featherweight, lightweight and light welterweight division, but he hasn’t.
Fighters like Humberto Soto, Nate Campbell, Marcos Maidana and Timothy Bradley have been ignored by Pacquiao while he instead has handpicked Diaz, De La Hoya and Hatton instead. Ricky was once considered to be the best fighter in the light welterweight division, but by the time that Pacquiao fought him he wasn’t close to being the same fighter he was earlier in his career and I don’t consider him as being even in the top five in the light welterweight division at the time that Pacquiao fought him. A better choice for Pacquiao would have been a fight against Bradley, but he probably would have been too dangerous for Manny.
It’s too bad that Pacquiao wants an even split with Mayweather, because until he accepts that he’s not in the same class as Mayweather as a PPV star attraction the fight won’t happen. I rarely see Pacquiao on American television, and when I do I can’t understand hardly a word he’s saying through his broken English accent. Boxing is show business and if you can’t understand what a person is saying when they’re speaking the King’s English, that’s a big problem for me.
Even with his trainer Freddie Roach deciphering what Pacquiao is trying to say, I still can hardly understand what Roach is saying through his mumbling. I’m sorry, but you have to be understood clearly by the boxing public when speaking and you also have to face the best fighters without all these silly weight draining catch weight fights that Pacquiao recently has started insisting on for his opponents.
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