By Christian Ramos: I take the risk in writing yet another Mayweather/Pacquiao article, yet I do not know if it’s fair or not the boxing public. You deserve to know the truth. Nobody seems to be giving it. Therefore, what you get are new episodes to the soap opera. Once again, the sport that is meant to portray artistic violence, feeds us nothing but gossip.
After Bob Arum decided to move on to a fight with Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao, everyone is looking for the party to place the blame on. Arum openly stated that instead of heading directly towards Team Mayweather, he relied on Ross Greenburg, President of HBO Sports, to serve as a mediator through the negotiation process. That seemed to give a slight explanation to Floyd Mayweather’s awkward silence. He then finally broke his silence stating he is not interested in the fight at the moment, but he also gave no further explanation as to why.
Floyd’s father and uncle both gave possible reasons. Floyd Sr. explained that his son was not interested in receiving equal pay as Pacquiao, being that he constantly sells more Pay per View. Jeff Mayweather has also stated that Floyd was indeed serious about his random blood and urine drug testing request. Jeff said that Manny was willing to be tested as long as there is a cut-off date. Floyd and PacMan seem to have different opinions as to what defines “random”.
Leonard Ellerbe, advisor to Floyd Jr., announced that there were no negotiations going on between Team PacMan, Ross Greenburg, and anyone involved with Floyd, specifically Al Haymon, Richard Schaefer, and himself. Arum then answered by questioning Oscar De La Hoya’s comments of a close signing of the fight. Oscar was afraid of getting into detail, but decided to let people know the fight was very close of being concrete. It makes sense that someone would say that if there were actual negotiations going on.
Well, apparently, Oscar De La Hoya had no idea what he was saying. After being questioned for his comments and being viewed as a possible witness to negotiations, Oscar denied his previous statement as being serious. He said that his answer of negotiations being close was a sarcastic dismissal of the issue. One could compare his reaction to that as having a nagging wife constantly ask you if you’ve got to taking out the garbage, and you answer, “Yeah, uh, huh, it’s done, leave me alone!” You know very well, the garbage is still right where it is and always was.
Ross Greenburg spoke out and said he has actually been presenting offers to both camps since May 2nd, supporting Top Rank that deals were being attempted by both sides.
Now, let’s move on to the new episode. Richard Schaefer has called out both Arum and Greenburg. A couple days ago he answered Arum’s remarks by challenging him to a lie detector test. He said he was telling the truth and was willing to prove it by taking one himself to see who was actually lying. He now questions Greenburg as to whom he was negotiating terms with from Team Mayweather. He didn’t say Arum was lying. He was actually very interested in knowing what terms have been offered for Greenburg to say someone from Team Mayweather agreed. He figures that Greenburg misled Arum, and he’s anxious for the HBO Sports President to inform him with whom he was actually talking to. Schaefer feels Arum would not go public with such a story without having Greenburg leading him on to believe such a thing. Those are some bold statements from Golden Boy CEO, adding his own flavor to mess that is Mayweather/Pacquiao. It seems that for the moment, Ross Greenburg and Bob Arum might be backed to a corner.
One thing is certain. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao is still not on for 2010. For now, we’ll just have to settle for Team Mayweather and Golden Boy vs. Team PacMan and HBO.
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