By Ryan Dunn: There has been more finger-pointing, slandering, name-calling, insulting, whining, crying, and in-fighting surroudning the Mayweather/Pacquiao negotiations than a kindergarten playground. I have engaged in several (hopefully spirited) debates myself, offering my point of view on the matter. Let me summarize what I personally believe to be the situation, and the readers can weigh-in with their thoughts.
A brief time line… Manny Pacquiao fights Miguel Cotto on November 17, 2009, and wins in an exciting fashion. Having come off two big performances against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton, the world hopped onto the Pacman Bandwagon, hailing him as the next best thing since Henry Armstrong.
But something was brewing. Before the Cotto fight, Floyd Mayweather Sr., a hall of fame trainer and father to Floyd Jr., proclaimed his doubts as to Manny’s legitimacy as a viable champion at heavier weights. After Floyd Sr. trained Ricky Hatton for one match and lost to Manny Pacquiao, he claimed that Manny Pacquiao — while still fighting like an amateur — is too strong for his frame. He noticed that, by the way Manny flexes his muscles at weigh-ins, you know something’s going on there. This accusation went mostly unheeded, however, because Floyd Sr. is nothing if not a good trash talker (where do you think his son gets it from?).
So the Cotto fight happened, and Manny won in such an impressive manner, that there were really only two immediate places for Manny to go; he would either have to face Shane Mosley or Floyd Mayweather next. Of course, there are a growing group of top welterweights who would all give Pacquiao a good challenge, some of them being better match-ups on paper than others, but everyone wanted to see Mosley or Mayweather take on the Filipino phenom.
Mayweather was obviously the top choice, since Floyd left the sport with a perfect record, and is hailed by many (myself included) to be one of the most technically sound and naturally gifted boxers in the sport. Unlike Manny, Floyd Jr. did not need a decade of fights to improve his ring craft. He always had the gift, and it always came easy to him. We all can play the “Who Did He Duck?” game (I’ll get to that in a minute), but the truth is he took on some great challengers, and worked with his promoters to pick some very “smart” fights — competitive match-ups that never posed a mortal threat to him or his legacy (for the record, Manny has done the same).
Shortly after the Cotto fight, the world was buzzing with the prospect of the Superfight to end all Super fights. The fans wanted to see Mayweather and Pacquiao enter the squared circle, and prove to the masses who was best. Many skeptics had their doubts as to whether Mayweather would entertain the fight, or if he would avoid it, or put out lofty demands that could never realistically be met. But he surprised many when he opened the door to negotiations with Top Rank in no time at all.
There were some complications early on. The first was settling the purse split (Floyd came to Bob Arum with a 60/40 proposal, favoring Mayweather). Another surprise came when Golden Boy Promotions (the promoters who handle Floyd’s fights of late) stated that Floyd would agree to a 50/50 split. Everything seemed downhill from there. After that, Manny threw a curve ball, requesting an earlier fight date (in March instead of May) so that he could campaign for a senate seat in his homeland through April and May. Again, Team Mayweather agreed to the date.
The fans became cautiously optimistic. Could it be? The Superfight to end all Super fights might actually happen? And in MARCH no less? It all seemed so fast, so easy… almost TOO easy. Along with those bigger issues (the purse, the date), there were more minor issues, such as ring size, glove size, fight location… as well as two other items not mentioned up until this point.
The first came in the form of a weight limit penalty clause. Team Pacquiao realized they were coming into the fight as the smaller opponent. Floyd has fought as heavy as 150 against De La Hoya, while Manny has said he can’t fight at his level much higher than 145. So after Mayweather came in overweight against a much smaller Juan Manuel Marquez, paying a $300,000 fine with a smile on his face, Pacquiao and his handlers demanded a much higher penalty if Mayweather were to come overweight in their fight. They demanded a $10 million per pound penalty for every pound Floyd Jr. came in over. This was not meant to line Pacquiao’s pockets, but to ensure that both fighters met at the same weight by the end of their training regimes.
And in another surprise, Floyd agreed.
But you see, while all of these demands were acquiesced to (from Mayweather keeping the fight in Vegas, to Manny getting the standard ring size), Team Mayweather had their own clause, a drug testing addendum, which required both fighters to undergo Olympic style drug testing, blood and urine, to ensure the cleanliness and level the playing field. On the surface, this seems no more absurd than Manny’s $10 million per pound penalty. Right?
Well… you remember when I mentioned something was brewing back when Floyd Sr. made his baseless accusation of Manny Pacquiao? Well it was about to boil over, in ways I don’t think either side could have predicted. Some sources have stated that Freddie Roach himself had agreed to any kind of blood or urine testing the promoters saw fit, no problem. And while Manny Pacquiao never came out and acknowledged this to be true (he was in the Philippines at the time, remember), those who knew of the situation trusted that Freddie’s word was good.
However, Floyd Mayweather, before the contracts were ever signed (before the Pacquiao/Cotto match), in early October of last year, called in to Shade45, a satellite radio channel, and did an interview with RA the Rugged Man. RA drilled Floyd for ducking great fighters, and for picking on smaller men (at the time, those smaller men could only have been Marquez and Hatton, since De La Hoya was a bigger man than Floyd, and those were the only fights anyone cared about at the time). Floyd got upset in that interview, and was pressed by RA to challenge Pacquiao and enter the ring with a true champion. That was when Mayweather, in his flustered state, made an off-handed remark which bared a scary resemblance to his father’s accusations from several months earlier.
Floyd implied that Manny may be on something, and that the Philippines were the makers of some of the best performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) on the market. Whether this was true or not, the statement seemed to come out of nowhere.
This interview didn’t break big to the boxing public right away. Once the Mayweather/Pacquiao negotiations got serious, however, word got out. Eventually it reached the ears of Top Rank and Team Pacquiao. But it was too late for Team Mayweather to save face. It spread like a brush fire. And before long, other boxers like Paulie Malignaggi, and even Miguel Cotto, began to share their suspicions about Pacquiao being a clean fighter. You would have thought these guys were running for president the way the smear campaign took hold. Once De La Hoya (Floyd’s own promoter!) threw his hat into the ring and changed his own story about Pacquiao’s uncanny punching power, you knew things were getting bad.
But where did this all come from? Nobody had ever publicly accused Manny of being on PEDs before he fought Cotto besides Floyd Sr. Nobody even seemed to have their theories in place after he destroyed Cotto. The naysayers simply said that Cotto might have been too damaged from the Margarito fight, which is a fine debate. Now, all of the sudden, Manny is guilty in the court of public opinion? My, my, what a couple of weeks made!
Well needless to say, Manny was none to pleased to find out that not only he but his own country had been accused of illicit behavior. This was right around the same time that Team Pacquiao started their litany of excuses. Whether intentional or not, Team Mayweather could not have asked for a better result. What started as a brush fire had now grown into one of the most public defamation stories in all of sports.
Instead of denying the accusations outright and threatening to sue (both of which Pacquiao did), Top Rank and Pacquiao floundered around. One minute their story was that Manny didn’t feel that taking blood from the body was natural. Then the word got out that Manny was afraid of needles (in fairness, this was never mentioned during the Mayweather negotiations, but something Manny had stated in the past), regardless of all of his tattoos. Then Moralesgate™ hit the airwaves, and people learned that in the fight Manny lost to Morales, he had blood taken from his body two days prior, in a NSAC mix-up in which they had misplaced Manny’s original sample from his physical.
It all began to look like the behavior of a guilty man. And though I hate to admit it, I questioned the boxer’s honesty myself. Could Mayweather and his cohorts actually have found some nugget of truth amidst their wild and unfounded accusations? I began to wonder.
But then I thought about it more. Was this really a story about Mayweather trying to “clean up the sport of boxing,” as is his current hue and cry (it’s worth noting that in his last fight out of retirement vs. Marquez, there was no blood testing clause)? Or was this about a fight that was never really going to happen regardless of how swimmingly the negotiations had gone up until that point?
Let’s examine some of the motives at play here…
If you subscribe to the “Manny is Guilty,” camp, you claim that Manny’s refusal to take the tests as an admission of guilt. That is a fair position, but you have to take this stance knowing that there is absolutely no proof in existence to support the claim — no dirty needle in the duffel bag, no vile of The Clear in his locker, no frozen bag of his blood in his freezer at home — only the suspicion of some less-than-credible sources. But still, I will agree, when O.J fled from the authorities in his white Bronco, most of us knew what was up. The question here though is this: Why not just take the test and prove your innocence? What’s the big deal?
But if you take the “Manny is the Victim,” approach, AKA innocent until proven guilty, then you have to look at facts objectively. Not only facts but motive. Why would Manny refuse testing for drugs he hasn’t even taken yet? Should we believe that Manny is so dependent on PEDs that he won’t agree to NOT take them even though he stands to make more than $30 million for a few hours in the ring?
It just didn’t add up for me. Yes, I agree, Manny and his team handled the defamation very poorly. They should have just said something like, “We don’t have anything to hide, and we don’t have anything to prove,” and left it in Mayweather’s court to try and get the NSAC to change the rules. At least then it would be a firm stance upon which you could judge Team Pacquiao upon.
But I honestly don’t think Pacquiao has any fear about facing Mayweather. The motive just isn’t there, and here’s why:
Is Manny afraid of losing? No. He’s already lost in the past. Is Manny afraid of Floyd’s punching power? No. Floyd is not a knockout artist. Is Manny worried he won’t get any big fights after this one? No. He can retire the wealthiest man in the Philippines if he loses.
By this logic, there is no reason Manny, if he so chose, couldn’t have just said “Fine,” to the testing, and trained for Mayweather totally clean. Even if he was the biggest steroid user in all of his 55 fights leading up to this fight, he STILL could have gone clean on this one, and lost the fight badly.
So the “Manny is Guilty,” line of thought doesn’t hold water for me. But does Floyd have any motivation NOT to make this fight happen? I think you will find this hard to refute. Let’s take a look…
Is Floyd concerned about keeping his undefeated record? Of course he is, he brags about it every interview he has (and rightfully so!). Is Floyd afraid of Manny’s power? He might not tell you he is, but he’s mentioned many times how proud he is of the fact he never took any punishment in the ring. Does Floyd need the money? He won’t admit it, but the IRS has exposed that Floyd went a long time without paying his taxes, and had millions of back-moneys to pay to the government.
He has also said that skills pay the bills, and that legacy doesn’t feed your family. So you have to think that part of his reason for coming out of retirement has something more to do with money than a strict love for the sport, correct? By this logic, a risky fight, including a loss to Pacquiao, would not only ruin his perfect record, it could seriously jeopardize his value as a boxer after that. Remember, he was never the biggest draw in boxing until AFTER his fight with De La Hoya (if you don’t believe me, understand that De La Hoya made $52 million in their fight, while Mayweather made less than half that, at $25 million).
So the question of who is ducking who seems to me to point more to Mayweather than it does to Pacquiao. But I’m also not 100% clear that anyone is ducking anyone. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing spiralled out of control, and it came down to the egos of two fighters getting in the way of the deal. Or it could be a publicity stunt conducted by the promoters involved to drum up even more interest in the match up for an even larger purse and PPV record late this summer or early this fall.
All I know is that Mayweather and Mosley are going to fight. And if you’re going to duck Pacquiao, then you damn well better duck Mosley, because both of those guys (if anybody) stand a very good chance of beating you.
The debate will continue, of course, maybe forever, but I think down deep we STILL all want to see this fight happen. Both of these guys, both Mayweather and Pacquiao, have Spring fights to get past first, and both of them have their hands full with strong fighters who can hurt them.
Comments are closed.