By Chris Williams: We are now in the last hours of promoter Bob Arum’s deadline for unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. to indicate whether he’ll accept the contract proposal that Arum sent to him for a November 13th fight against Manny Pacquiao. Arum’s deadline is officially up by 12 midnight tonight, and Mayweather still hasn’t said a word about what his intentions are. Oddly enough, Arum has sounded like he really doesn’t care either way whether Mayweather fights Pacquiao now or not, saying it’s okay, we can always fight Mayweather in May 2011. There doesn’t seem to be any disappointment nor urgency from Arum and that is very peculiar to me.
The interest in this fight won’t be the same if the two parties can’t negotiate this fight soon. There is a diminishing return for a fight like this, especially with Pacquiao being set up with one-sided fights against opponents that boxing fans don’t really care about. The time for this fight was right after Pacquiao beat Cotto. Pacquiao had beaten Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton before that to become a mega star in the United States.
However, Pacquiao’s last fight was against Joshua Clottey and the interest wasn’t there for that fight. And now Arum is talking about matching Pacquiao up either in a rematch with Cotto, which is a horrid match-up that few boxing fans to see, or recently suspended Antonio Margarito, who can’t get licensed to fight in the U.S. Those are dreadful options and won’t likely do much to increase Pacquiao’s popularity with the American public.
Arum’s deadline, I don’t know if he realizes this or not, makes it seem as if he’s calling the shots with Mayweather and that’s pretty bizarre since Mayweather is the number #2 biggest moneymaker in sports behind Tiger Woods. Pacquiao doesn’t make the same kind of money that Mayweather does; that’s just the way it is. This is why it seems like Arum has lost track with who the real power player is in this fight. The whole deadline thing seems like a recipe for failure by Arum.
It almost seems like he really doesn’t want Pacquiao to fight Mayweather right now. I can’t understand that because the way that Mayweather has dominated Juan Manuel Marquez and Shane Mosley recently, it’s easy to see Mayweather doing the same with Pacquiao. Once Pacquiao is schooled badly by Mayeweather, Pacquiao’s earning potential will probably take a huge drop.
I wouldn’t say that the gravy train for Arum would be over, but you would have to think that there would be smaller paydays for Pacquiao until he built himself back up, if he ever could. This is why I wouldn’t be surprised if the contract proposal that Arum sent over to Mayweather had things in it that Mayweather, of course, would never agree to. I think Arum will make this fight happen when Pacquiao is finally on the verge of retirement in two or three years, and showing signs of no longer being able to dominate his opponents. By this time, however, the interest in a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight probably will have long dissipated.
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