Mayweather has little choice but to try and fight Pacquiao next

By Boxing News - 09/10/2010 - Comments

Image: Mayweather has little choice but to try and fight Pacquiao nextBy Jason Kim: With all the troubles that have been storming through Floyd Mayweather’s life in the past three weeks, the only way that he can get boxing fans to forget about all of this is to sign up and fight Manny Pacquiao as soon as humanly possible, preferably in early 2011. Hopefully, Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum are still open to the fight because I can see them ignoring Mayweather after his racist video he put out recently. Mayweather may have to literally crawl for a shot against Pacquiao if he wants to fight him now.

Mayweather may not realize this yet, but he just gave Pacquiao a tremendous boost at the negotiating table. Mayweather absolutely needs the Pacquiao fight now to make people forget his video and to make them realize he’s not afraid of Pacquiao. The video, besides being offensive, seemed to indicate strongly that Mayweather is very worried about fighting Pacquiao. Mayweather’s fear came across loud and clear throughout the rambling video no matter how much trash talk and posturing he made.

At this point, Pacquiao is probably in a great position to get whatever he wants from Mayweather for a fight. I don’t think it even matters how well Pacquiao’s fight with Antonio Margarito does on November 13th, I think Mayweather is going to have to take whatever he can get from the Filipino star. I think Pacquiao and Arum will still offer Mayweather a 50-50 deal, but he’s not going to be in a position to drag this out and call the shots.

He needs to get this fight signed and underway as soon as possible, so he can make boxing fans forget about the huge mess of things he’s made in the media recently. Pacquiao could really sink Mayweather’s ship if he were to ignore his pleading for a fight and then turn around and take on someone like Miguel Cotto in a rematch. Mayweather would then have to twist and turn even longer while waiting for a fight.

There’s no one that Mayweather will likely take on that will get the boxing public to forget about his recent troubles. The fighters that Mayweather needs to fight – Paul Williams and Sergio Martinez – he won’t likely fight because of how dangerous they would be for him. And fighting someone like Andre Berto or a small light welterweight like Timothy Bradley wouldn’t be a big enough star to get people to forget about the video mess.



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