By Chris Williams: World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (51-3-2, 38 KO’s) is reportedly willing to take the Olympic style random blood tests that Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants before he’ll fight Pacquiao, according to the Manila Bulletin. This is a major breakthrough in helping to put together a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather, as the two fighters were unable to put together a fight in the past because the negotiations stalled when Pacquiao stood firm at wanting the blood tests to stop at 24 days before the fight while Mayweather wanted them to go at least until 14 days.
Instead, Pacquiao walked away and chose Joshua Clottey to fight last March 13th, beating him by a 12 round decision at the Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The fight only drew 700,000 pay-per-view buys and was much less successful than Mayweather’s recent fight earlier this month against Shane Mosley on May 1st, which drew 1.4 million PPV purchases.
In an interview by writer Nick Giongco, Pacquiao said “As long as they’re not getting a large amount of blood, I am willing to give out blood as close to two weeks before the fight.” The major question now is whether that will be acceptable to Mayweather or not. He’s said in interviews that next time he negotiates for a fight with Pacquiao that the random blood tests would go all the way up to the fight. In other words, the random blood tests would truly be random and not limited like the way Pacquiao wants them to be. Pacquiao says “I felt very weak after they got the blood,” talking about blood being taken before his first fight against Erik Morales in 2005.
Pacquiao lost that bout by a 12 round decision. However, he appeared to lose the fight because he wasn’t able to punch with both hands as well as Morales did. Pacquiao has since learned how to use his right hand and is a much more versatile fighter now compared to back then. But Pacquiao would have likely lost the first fight with Morales even if blood hadn’t been taken from him. Morales was at the top of his game, not weight drained like would be in his next two fights with Pacquiao and looking really good.
Pacquiao really wants to make the Mayweather fight happen – as does his trainer Freddie Roach -and his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. However, it could be that Pacquiao missed his chance at putting together the fight when he failed to continue negotiations with Mayweather last time. Instead of walking away and fighting Clottey in a bout that few people wanted to see, Pacquiao and his team should have gone the extra yard at that time to get the negotiations completed. Everything was perfect for a Mayweather fight at that time.
Floyd agreed to a 50-50 purse split and even agreed to a $10 million weight penalty, which would potentially hurt him a lot more than Pacquiao. It’s hard to imagine that Mayweather will be willing to accept a 14 day cutoff period now or the 50-50 deal. Mayweather just got a lot better numbers than Pacquiao did and that will likely factor in the negotiations. The thing of it is Pacquiao probably won’t take less than a 50% cut of the revenue, so the chances of a fight being put together between Pacquiao and Mayweather is likely slim.
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