By Dave Lahr: If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wants to really have a great chance of setting up a fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his fighter Manny Pacquiao, he needs to convince Pacquiao to agree to take the Olympic style random blood tests up to three days before the fight with Mayweather. After that, I can see it being reasonable for Pacquiao not to be tested any further until immediately after the fight.
The reason why I think that’s fair is because Mayweather wants all his opponents to agree to the full random blood tests before he’ll fight him. Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach has been talking about how it leaves Pacquiao weak after the fight. Roach says that it leaves Pacquiao weak for three solid days after having blood drawn.
Okay, since three days is how long it takes for Pacquiao to come back physically from a blood test, then a three day cutoff seems perfectly acceptable for Mayweather to push for the testing up to three days before the fight. I think that’s fair because if Mayweather was to agree to 14 days that would be too much time to allow between testing. With that many days without any drug testing, Mayweather might as well let Pacquiao not be tested at all because with that much time between testing anything is possible.
The other part of the negotiations is the purse split. Last time it was 50-50 for the failed negotiations between Mayweather and Pacquiao in January. Unfortunately, those numbers are going to have to shift more in Mayweather’s favor. Things have changed since the last negotiations.
Pacquiao fought an obscure opponent Joshua Clottey at the Cowboy Stadium in Texas, received less than impressive pay-per-view numbers and failed to fight an exciting, dominant, crowding-pleasing fight.
Mayweather, however, brought in excellent PPV numbers, double Pacquiao’s at 1.4 million PPV buys, fought an exciting fight and dominated Shane Mosley by a 12 round unanimous decision, losing only one round. Mosley was considered to be the number #3 welterweight in the division at the time Mayweather fought him.
Because of Mayweather’s better PPV numbers, I think he deserves no less than a 55-45 split of the revenue. That’s just the way it is. Mayweather has accomplished more with his win over Mosley and fought the better opponent and received more PPV buys. Things could have been different, but Arum made the mistake of matching him against one of his less than super star fighters in his stable instead of matching him against an outside fighter with a much bigger name.
Clottey’s probably not arguing, since he got a great payday, but the move seems to have been a disastrous one for Pacquiao in helping him in negotiations for Mayweather. Now if Pacquiao holds out for a 50-50 deal, he may end up forced to fight Miguel Cotto again or maybe Antonio Margarito. Not exactly interesting fights, is it?
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