By Jason Kim: There’s still still a little time left for Floyd Mayweather Jr. to come forward before Bob Arum’s midnight deadline ends tonight and say he’ll take the fight with Manny Pacquiao. To be sure, I don’t think Arum helped matters one bit by making a public deadline for Mayweather to say whether he’ll agree to the fight or not. That seems like something done to get Mayweather to feel shame for not speaking up and taking the fight rather than a true effort to make the fight happen. I can’t blame Mayweather for not wanting to respond to a deadline that Arum sets up under those circumstances, because it makes Arum look like he’s got the power in this situation, when he really doesn’t.
I don’t think he does. I like Pacquiao and thinks he’s a great fighter, but I don’t believe that he’s in the same class as Mayweather in terms of being on his level in selling fights on pay-per-view nor in terms of ability. I think Arum has done a good job of matching Pacquiao up with fighters that he can beat with Miguel Cotto, Oscar De La Hoya, Joshua Clottey and Ricky Hatton, but those guys are nowhere near the same talent level that Mayweather. It’s not even close.
Pacquiao has been set up with a series of come forward types of fighters that have tried to slug with him. That’s the one thing that Pacquiao can do well – slug. He’s not a great boxer, isn’t good at making his opponents miss and doesn’t move well around the ring. He’s pretty much just a talented slugger who is good at beating other sluggers. For Arum to make a deadline like this, it seems like a thoughtless move on his part. Part of me thinks that Arum was looking for cover if the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight didn’t get put together during a second try.
What better way then to make a public deadline for Mayweather to agree to the fight or not. The problem with this is that Arum failed to make public what was in the contract that he wanted Mayweather to agree to. Since only Arum and Golden Boy Promotions knows what’s inside the contract proposal sent to Mayweather, we don’t know whether or not Arum sent the exact same contract proposal as the last time he attempted to put together a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather.
It wouldn’t make any sense for Arum to send the same contract over to Mayweather with the same 50-50 purse split as before when Pacquiao’s recent fight with Joshua Clottey only brought in half the PPV numbers compared to Mayweather’s fight over Shane Mosley. If Arum expected Mayweather to ignore his better numbers in his fight with Mosley and agree to a 50-50 deal, he would be asking Mayweather to sell himself short to a fighter that isn’t doing as well as him. Mayweather would be crazy to agree to a 50-50 deal unless he just didn’t care about money and didn’t have any problems with throwing it away.
Mayweather still has until midnight to agree to a fight with Pacquiao. There’s an outside chance that he could agree to the fight, but I get the impression he probably won’t do it. I think Arum sent him the same contract as before, with maybe one small change where Pacquiao has agreed to take random blood tests up until 14 days before the fight.
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