By Chris Williams: Welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao says he won’t be retiring until AFTER he faces Floyd Mayweather Jr. and hands him a loss. Pacquiao is doing this at the request of one of his kids who specifically wants him to face Mayweather and beat him before Pacquiao finally hangs up his gloves.
Pacquiao said to sugarrayleonard.com that one of his children told him “I want you to retire, but before that I have a request – you need to fight Floyd Mayweather and beat him.”
Well, if Pacquiao wants to give what his kid is asking him to do then Pacquiao is going to have to agree to take the short money in order to make the Mayweather happen, because that’s only way it’s going to happen. You can’t expect Mayweather to give Pacquiao a 50-50 deal in terms of the purse split when Pacquiao is struggling to beat guys like Juan Manuel Marquez and wins the fight by a controversial decision. Mayweather fought the same guy and won every round of a 12 round fight in 2009.
You can’t expect Mayweather to give Pacquiao a 50-50 deal when he doesn’t shine against guys like Shane Mosley, Antonio Margarito and Joshua Clottey. After Mayweather’s fight against Miguel Cotto on May 5th, it’s going to be pretty much academic at that point that Pacquiao will have to take the smaller cut of the financial pie in a Mayweather fight, because Mayweather will make easy work with Cotto, and show how much better he is than Pacquiao in doing so.
Pacquiao beat Cotto in 2009 by a 12th round TKO, but he took a lot of punishment a long the way and he also fought the bout at a catchweight handicap. Mayweather doesn’t want Cotto to be weakened because he sees that as a cheap way of winning a fight. He wants Cotto at the FULL weight for the 154 pound division, which is why he’s agreed to fight him at 154 on the dot rather than make him drain down to 150 or some other god awful catchweight to try and get an advantage over him.
Cotto said it himself the reason why he chose to fight Mayweather next rather than Pacquiao was because the way he was treated during negotiations with Mayweather compared to Pacquiao. Cotto said to RingTV “We had more than one reason for deciding to pick the Mayweather fight instead of the Pacquiao fight, you know? I received better treatment in Mayweather’s negotiations and we decided to go with Mayweather.”
What Cotto is likely talking about is the weight issues. Pacquiao’s team wanted Cotto to come all the way down to 147 to fight Pacquiao and weren’t interested in meeting him at a catchweight of 150lbs, whereas Mayweather agreed to the fight Cotto at the full weight of the junior middleweight division at 154.
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