By Dan Ambrose: It’s sad to think that the mega fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao could depend on the random drug blood testing that Mayweather wants for the fight. At this point, there would be many other areas that could stop the fight from being made, such as the revenue split and the $10 million weight penalty that Pacquiao’s team asked to be part of the contract last time out when negotiating with Mayweather.
By the way, Mayweather agreed to the $10 million weight penalty, but the fight still fell apart after Pacquiao wouldn’t agree to take the random blood tests any closer than 24 days before the fight. You really couldn’t call the testing random, since there was a cut off period almost a month before the fight.
This time out, there might have to be more given on Pacquiao’s part on the blood testing because Mayweather won’t likely agree to 24 days or maybe even a midpoint number like 17 or 18 days, which Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach said that they were going to try and get for this fight. That’s still a huge amount of time in between blood tests and it’s questionable whether Mayweather will go for that. This isn’t like Mayweather is as needy as he was for the fight. He was before his fight with Shane Mosley, but that fight seems to have cemented Mayweather’s status as the number #1 fighter in boxing in the minds of many boxing fans.
There’s still a large amount of fans that think that Pacquiao is the best fighter in the sport and feel that he would beat Mayweather if they were to meet. But Mayweather appears to be feeling much better about himself after his one-sided win and likely sees himself as dealing from a position of strength in the negotiations – if there is any. In the best possible world, Pacquiao would simply agree to all the random blood tests like Mosley did, take the pain of feeling weak or whatever after having the blood removed and giving it his best shot. However, that’s not likely to happen.
Pacquiao honestly believes that he’s weakened by the blood tests and needs a big cushion of days, weeks, to recover from the blood tests before the fight. Will Mayweather be comfortable with the last blood test from Pacquiao occurring nearly a month before the fight? I don’t think so. This is why Pacquiao, if he really wants to fight Mayweather, is going to have to come in closer to the 14 days that Mayweather was asking for.
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