Arum thinks the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations won’t be taking place too much longer

By Boxing News - 06/28/2010 - Comments

Image: Arum thinks the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations won't be taking place too much longerBy Chris Williams: Promoter Bob Arum, who is working for WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, doesn’t think the negotiations between Pacquiao and unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be going on too much longer. Arum still won’t give a date as to when the negotiations will be completed.

There’s also a chance that the negotiations won’t be completed because of differences over the purse split and the random blood testing cutoff. Pacquiao wants a 50-50 deal, which is the same deal as last time when he and Arum unsuccessfully attempted to put together a fight with Mayweather. At that time, Mayweather was in agreement with the 50-50 split of the revenue.

However, he wanted the blood testing to go up until 14 days before the fight while Pacquiao wanted it to stop 24 days. Instead of sticking it out with the negotiations, Arum then picked another one of his Top Rank fighters Joshua Clottey for Pacquiao to fight inside. The results weren’t overwhelmingly positive, as the fight brought in only 700,000 pay-per-view buys, less than half of the 1.4 million PPV buys that Mayweather took in for his fight against Shane Mosley on May 1st. Perhaps because of that, Mayweather is asking for a bigger cut of the financial pie this time.

It’s understandable, because his numbers were better not only for this fight, but also for his fights against Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Juan Manuel Marquez.

Arum and Pacquiao can’t wait on Mayweather forever, though, because Arum has booked the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas, for November 13th and he needs to start marketing the fight ahead of time. If Mayweather doesn’t take the fight, then Pacquiao could fight some of Arum’s other fighters in his Top Rank stable like Miguel Cotto (again) or Antonio Margarito.

Neither of those fights is particularly appealing but that’s about the best that Arum has to offer in his stable right now. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. isn’t ready for a fight against Manny Pacquiao, and besides that, he’s probably too big to get down in weight low enough. Besides that, it would probably end up being a terrible fight, much worse than Pacquiao’s recent win over Clottey.

Chavez struggled with John Duddy this past weekend, winning a 12 round decision but struggling nonetheless for much of the fight. A fight between Pacquiao and Margarito would be good if Margarito had his boxing license to fight in the U.S., which he doesn’t, and if he hadn’t gotten so badly dominated a year ago by Shane Mosley. Margarito hasn’t done much to redeem himself since that loss other than beating Roberto Garcia, a fighter few fans have even heard of.



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