By Chris Williams: Although we still don’t know what the particulars were of the 2nd failed negotiations between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, things could have taken a turn for the worse when/if Pacquiao asked for a 50-50 cut of the revenue. There was talk previously about Pacquiao wanting nothing less than a 50-50 deal with Mayweather, and if that was the case, that right there might well have been enough to turn Mayweather off for the fight.
Mayweather said yesterday that he’s not interested in fighting right now and that he just wants to relax. However, with Pacquiao wanting an even 50-50 deal, that might have made Mayweather’s decision that much easier to take a break from boxing for perhaps the remainder of 2010.
Bob Arum says he’s going to revisit the negotiations for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight next year in May, but if Arum is offering mostly the same old negotiation terms that were used in the first failed negotiations in January, then he probably needs to save himself the time by not bothering.
I think Mayweather is willing to walk away from the countless millions he would make in a fight with Pacquiao unless he gets a bigger cut. Arum, or in this case Ross Greenburg, might be able to put together a deal where Mayweather gets 55 to Pacquiao’s 45. That might work well enough to satisfy Mayweather.
However, getting Pacquiao to agree to that will be a problem if he’s stubborn about it. Pacquiao will be fighting either Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito next. If that fight does poorly, then it will give Mayweather one more reason to ask for the bigger cut of the pie. Unless Arum and Pacquiao acknowledge that Mayweather is the bigger pay per view attraction, this fight will likely never get made.
Anytime you have a fighter that is bringing in less money in PPV fights than another, one of the fighters is going to want the bigger money. That’s just normal. And when you throw in the fact that one of the fighters is also unbeaten, it makes it even more of a compelling reason why the unbeaten star should get the bigger money.
It would be better if Pacquiao and Arum acknowledge that Mayweather is the bigger PPV money maker, and then take the smaller money so this fight can be made in May 2011. It’s too late to put the fight together now, but Arum and Pacquiao can at least learn from this.
Comments are closed.