By Chris Williams: Surprisingly Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza thinks that Pacquiao shouldn’t get an even 50-50 slice of the financial pie in a fight against Mayweather if Mayweather’s gate and pay-per-view numbers are better.
Ariza said this in response to a question about whether Pacquiao deserves a 50-50 deal with Mayweather: “Not if Floyd’s #’s are higher.”
Ouch, that hurts! I wonder why Ariza isn’t kissing Pacquiao’s backside? After all, he is his employer. I respect the heck out of Ariza for being honest like this, though.
We’re already seeing that Mayweather’s numbers are higher with his fight against Miguel Cotto recently, which thus far has brought in a cool 1.5 million buys. Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto was only able to bring in 1.25 million PPV buys. Obviously, to determine whether Mayweather is the bigger draw you have to look at more than one fight, which is why I think it’s a good idea that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer had recently that an accounting firm needs to tabulate the numbers of the two fighters to determine who the bigger money fighter is. Schaefer’s open to the idea, and thus far Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, hasn’t said whether he’ll agree to this idea. Arum’s suggest is to have the purse split 45-45 each with the extra 10 percent going to the winner of the fight. Mayweather, however, doesn’t believe that Pacquiao is worth 45%, so even that offer by Arum is a non starter. I agree with Mayweather. Why give Pacquiao 45% of the revenue right off the bat if he’s only bringing in 40% of what Mayweather is bringing in.
Ariza also said in response to a twitter comment from someone saying that it wasn’t all Arum’s fault: “Wrong, it’s Arum’s fault.”
Ariza also said “Manny can’t fight anyone not promoted by Bob.”
Well, I think Pacquiao sometimes fights guys that aren’t promoted by Arum. He did fight Juan Manuel Marquez recently, and there were fights against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton. However, in the last couple of years, there’s been several fights against Top Rank stable fighters like Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito. And now Pacquiao is about to fight Tim Bradley, another one of Arum’s Top Rank fighters. So, in theory it does seem like Pacquiao is fighting Arum’s guys quite a bit, but it’s not all the time.
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