By Chris Williams: In the latest boxing news, HBO veteran analyst Larry Merchant is saying that he thinks that the mega fight between WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather will be put together and he expects the huge fight to take place in November of this year. In an interview at the Boxingtruth.com, Merchant, speaking about the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao bout, said “Yes, I believe it is going to happen in November. What exclusively I have heard, I cannot reveal entirely, but I think most of the issues have been resolved.“
Merchant doesn’t discuss what those issues might be, but many people believe it involves the random blood tests that Mayweather wants and the revenue split. Mayweather wanted blood testing for performance enhancing drugs to take place up to 14 days before a fight with Pacquiao during his negotiations with Pacquiao last January. At the time, however, Pacquiao wouldn’t agree to anything less than 24 days.
Pacquiao has since changed his mind about this and is agreeing to Mayweather’s 14 days. What is not known is whether Mayweather will accept the 14 days now. Everything has changed since the last negotiations. Pacquiao fought Joshua Clottey and came up with unimpressive pay-per-view numbers of 700,000 for that fight held at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas.
Pacquiao also didn’t exactly shine in that fight either, taking a lot of shots to the head and having massive amounts of punches blocked by Clottey. Pacquiao’s face looked badly bruised after the fight. In contrast, Mayweather fought Shane Mosley, whom he easily defeated by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on May 1st and came in with 1.4 million PPV buys.
These numbers was much better than Pacquiao’s numbers with Clottey. Mayweather also performed a lot better against an arguably better fighter, beating Mosley with ease, and rarely getting hit after a close call in the 2nd round. At the end of the fight, Mayweather’s face looked as if he had gone through a gym workout rather than a fight. He was totally unmarked and looked like he could go another 12 rounds.
These two performances, plus the differences in the PPV numbers, would seem to favor Mayweather in the negotiations. The last time Mayweather and Pacquiao negotiated, they agreed to a 50-50 deal of the revenue. This time, those numbers won’t likely be the same, even though Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, wanted to plug in the same deal as last time. But that obviously isn’t going to happen.
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