By Chris Williams: According to thesweetscience.com, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum hasn’t heard anything from Floyd Mayweather Jr. about whether or not he’ll accept the 14 day blood test cutoff that Manny Pacquiao has agreed to for a fight. Other than the concession made by Pacquiao for the blood testing, Arum is keeping the original negotiations in place for a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather. That seems like a little bit of wishful thinking if you ask me. It’s highly doubtful that Mayweather, the hot fighter right now, is going to accept the conditions made during the last failed negotiations period in January of this year, because a lot of things have changed since then.
I can see why Arum want to keep the original deal locked in place, because it was 50-50 deal of the revenue and there was the $10 million weight penalty, which would affect Mayweather much more so than Pacquiao. But it’s difficult to see Mayweather agreeing to any of these items now. He recently defeated Shane Mosley by a one-sided 12 round decision on May 1st. Mayweather basically reduced Mosley to that of one of his many victims, badly out-classing him.
That right there is pretty significant but then when you weigh in the 1.4 million pay-per-view buys that Mayweather got for his Mosley fight, then it gives him a lot more power at the bargaining table. Pacquiao’s PPV numbers for his March 13th fight with Joshua Clottey were half of that, coming in at only 700,000. Those are respectable numbers, to be sure, but around half of Mayweather’s numbers. People will no doubt point out that Mayweather had the more popular opponent compared to Pacquiao.
That may be true, but Mayweather wasn’t the one that picked Clottey to fight so how can he be blamed for this? Pacquiao clearly would have been better off had a better opponent been picked for him than Clottey, but unfortunately they weren’t. So, Mayweather has the better PPV numbers and the better win with his victory over Mosley. How can you expect Mayweather to agree to the same deal, minus the changed blood testing cutoff, as last time?
I would like for Mayweather to agree to the old deal just so we could see the fight, but I think it’s not realistic that he’ll accept those old terms. Mayweather, unless I miss my guess, is going to want the get the lion’s share of the revenue split, meaning more than 50%. He’s also not likely to want to agree to the $10 million weight penalty either. And finally, the 14 day cutoff for the Olympic style blood testing, which Mayweather asked for during the first attempt at negotiating, probably won’t be accepted now.
Pacquiao refused them at that time and wanted instead to have the testing cutoff at 24 days. Mayweather is probably going to want the full random blood tests. Will Pacquiao agree to that? Depends on how badly he wants the fight with Mayweather. But I think Arum is way off if he believes that Mayweather is going to accept the deal from the last failed negotiations. That was then, this is now.
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