Dana White thinks Mayweather doesn’t want the Pacquiao fight because of the difficult style match-up Manny would be for him

By Boxing News - 08/24/2010 - Comments

By Chris Williams: For what it’s worth, UFC president Dana White thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesn’t want the bout against Manny Pacquiao because of how difficult the Filipino star would be because of his fast hand speed and power. In an interview with Fighthype.com, White said “Floyd is used to fighting these guys where he can counter punch and he’s so fast that when they try to hit him, he hits them. He moves around and does his thing. Pacquiao is so f**king dangerous because he’s so fast, he hits hard too and he throws his best punches while he’s getting hit. I think it’s a very dangerous fight for Floyd Mayweather Jr. and I think Floyd knows that and I don’t think Floyd is too crazy about this fight.”

I disagree with White. I think Mayweather has no problem with fighting Pacquiao, as long the Filipino fighter takes the full random blood tests that Mayweather has been requesting. That’s the major thing. Pacquiao has been giving Mayweather resistance on this in the past and that’s caused one fight already to go up in smoke. Had Pacquiao agreed to a 14 day cutoff that Mayweather wanted during their first negotiation attempt in January, they would have already fought. Instead, Pacquiao stood firm at 24 day cut off for the drug testing, which is a huge amount of time between tests. The other thing that Mayweather obviously will want is the bigger cut of the revenue.

With Pacquiao getting smaller numbers than Mayweather in his pay per view bouts recently, Pacquiao isn’t in a good position to be asking for a 50-50 deal. Manny is going to have to come down a lot lower than 50-50 if he wants to take on a hugely popular fighter like Mayweather. Floyd is like a marketing machine when it comes to selling a fight. There’s probably no one better than him in any sport. I think Pacquiao his promoter can make this fight with Mayweather happen immediately if they were to agree to the full random blood tests and a 60-40 deal with Mayweather.

But if Arum keeps putting Pacquiao in with less than popular fighters from his Top Rank stable, that number may need to come down even lower because Pacquiao’s fights might start tanking in terms of PPV buys. We already saw a dramatic fall from the 1 million buys that Pacquiao got with the Cotto fight to only 700,000 for his fight against Joshua Clottey in March. If I was a promoter, that’s a fight that I would not have made for Pacquiao. I would have seen the likelihood of this match-up not doing well on PPV and in turn the lower numbers would have on negotiations with Mayweather.



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