By Dave Lahr: We’ve seen Manny Pacquiao give in and appease Floyd Mayweather Jr. recently by agreeing to a 14 day cut for blood testing for a fight with him. Mayweather originally wanted Pacquiao to agree to the 14 days last time they tried unsuccessfully to negotiate. Pacquiao stuck with 24 days then, and the fight didn’t get made. Now months later after Pacquiao beat Joshua Clottey and Mayweather beat Shane Mosley, Pacquiao is agreeing to Mayweather’s original request of 14 days.
But nothing is happening since Pacquiao made his announcement. There hasn’t been a peep out of Mayweather about whether this will suffice or not. However, since Mayweather isn’t saying anything at all, other than talking about wanting to step away from boxing for one to two years, it might take some more appeasing by Pacquiao to get Mayweather to open his trap and come to the bargaining table.
Pacquiao have to do something really desperate to get Mayweather to take the fight. Pacquiao has got to prime the pump if he wants this fight to happen because it’s do or die for Manny. He’s about to retire anyway, so he might as well go all out and show what a good politician he is by saying what he thinks Mayweather wants to hear.
I’m no mind reader but I’m guessing Mayweather now wants full random blood testing up until the very hour of their fight and probably wants a 60-40 cut of the revenue. I think both are perfectly reasonable requests by Mayweather because he is the cash cow of boxing and he did get double the pay per view revenue from his fight against Mosley compared to Pacquiao’s bout against Clottey.
And Mayweather did take part in the biggest PPV fight in boxing history in his fight against Oscar De La Hoya in 2007. Mayweather’s fight against De La Hoya, which brought in 2.4 million PPV buys, did a lot better than Pacquiao’s 1.25 million PPV buys for his fight against De La Hoya. Because of that, I think Pacquiao needs to do some groveling and show some humility to lure Mayweather off his couch and into the ring. Pacquiao has got to do something really special to get Mayweather to take the fight because I don’t see him doing it unless Pacquiao grovels a little.
But look at it this way, even if Pacquiao does wind up getting only 40% of the revenue for a Mayweather fight, that’s still a lot more than Pacquiao would get if he winds up fighting Miguel Cotto again. That’s a fight that could end up doing really badly the second around because everyone will know how their first fight went and probably won’t want to pay big cash to see another mismatch on top of what will likely be a dull undercard.
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