By Chris Williams: New HBO head of sport programming Ken Hershman believes that the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao has a shelf life for this fight that will soon be coming up if the bout isn’t made, according to an article at the New York Daily News.
Hershman, who recently left SHOWTIME to sign on as HBO’s President in charge of sports, told the nydailynews.com about the Pacquiao-Mayweather: “I do believe there is a sell by date by this this fight will become not what it should be. I hope by the end of this year we see these guys in the ring together. If not, maybe early next year. But after that, it will get less and less relevant.”
I think Hershman needs to let Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum know that because he’s already talking about booking Pacquiao for the remainder of the year with his four fighter tournament, which seems more like a vehicle to create stars out of guys like Timothy Bradley and Lamont Peterson than it is about making the best fight for Pacquiao.
I think the expiration date for the Pacquiao-Mayweather bout will be coming up at the end of the year, especially if Pacquiao puts in another poor performance like his last one. You can’t have a fighter winning controversial decisions like Pacquiao and staying where he was previous to that in the minds of boxing fans. The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight has been expiring since 2010, which is really the time the fight should have been made.
That was the time when Pacquiao wouldn’t agree to the random blood tests with a 17 day cut off that Mayweather tried to bargain for to check for performance enhancing drugs. Mayweather wanted the full random blood testing but the lowest Pacquiao would go is 24 days before the fight. I can’t imagine Lance Armstrong saying he couldn’t be tested within 24 days of a cycling event. That wouldn’t fly at all. But that killed the fight and Arum quickly ushered Pacquiao into a fight with fellow Top Rank fighter Joshua Clottey in what turned out to a god awful fight. That was the fight you remember where Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach swore by Clottey up and down that he would be a much more exciting opponent than Mayweather. What we saw was Clottey covering up like a sparring partner for 12 rounds and getting his nice payday and moving on.
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