By Jason Kim: Bob Arum hasn’t had much luck in two failed attempts at lining up a fight between his Top Rank star Manny Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr. this year. However, Arum seems to think that promoter Don King could be the deciding factor in getting a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight put together.
Speaking to the LA Times, Arum said “King’s the most persuasive guy I’ve ever met. With enough time, he’ll get this kid to come over. King’s no fool, he knows how to make a fight. If he were ever involved, it would give a real impetus to make this fight happen.”
King met with Mayweather last week in Florida to chat about different things. Whether King has enough pull with Mayweather to arrange a fight between him and Pacquiao remains to be seen. This could ultimately come down to whether Pacquiao can agree to the random blood testing and the percentage split that Mayweather wants more than anything that another promoter can do.
Mayweather honestly wants Pacquiao to take the random blood tests, and if he’s not going to do that then Mayweather will likely have problems with that. If Pacquiao can agree to the full blood tests, he’ll be going a long way in making the fight happen.
But Mayweather also will want the bigger percentage split of the purse. He doesn’t want to agree to a 50-50 deal. I don’t think King can change all that if Pacquiao doesn’t want to accept a smaller cut. Logically, Mayweather probably does deserve at least a 55-45 or 60-40 cut based on his better pay per view numbers recently. But if Pacquiao is going to resist taking a smaller cut, then it’s going to make it difficult even for an outside promoter like King to step in and help the situation.
Pacquiao has got to be willing to give on the negotiations and recognize Mayweather’s better PPV numbers if we’re got get the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight made anytime soon. Pacquiao has had a lot of success recently but he hasn’t done as well in his big fights compared to Mayweather in terms of PPV buys.
Comments are closed.