By Chris Williams: Earlier today, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao reached an out of court settlement in Pacquiao’s defamation lawsuit against him in Las Vegas, Nevada. Unfortunately boxing will never know what the final settlement was from Mayweather to Pacquiao, as the settlement was confidential.

As quoted by Sportsillustrated.cnn.com, Mayweather said through a mediator “wish to make it clear that they never intended to claim that Manny Pacquiao has used or is using any performance enhancing drugs, nor are they aware of any evidence that Manny Pacquiao has used performance enhancing drugs.”

The lawsuit, which was started in 2009, is now finished with this settlement.

Having this lawsuit out of the way could lead to the biggest boxing fight ever. As of now, the biggest pay per view fight was the Mayweather vs. Oscar De La Hoya fight from May 2007. That fight drew 2.4 million buys, which is an incredible number. It’s quite possible that a Mayweather vs. Pacquiao could eclipse that number, although I have my doubts that it will.

Pacquiao is a popular fighter in the U.S, but I don’t see him as in the same class as De La Hoya was. De La Hoya was a legitimate crossover star and had fans in his numbers from almost every race, including whites. A huge portion of Pacquiao’s fan base in the U.S is from the Filipino community.

To be sure, Pacquiao has got a lot of fans outside of his loyal Filipino fan base, but I don’t see Pacquiao as having the kinds of numbers of fans that De La Hoya had in the U.S. It’s a given that Pacquiao is huge in the Philippines, but I don’t see him as popular as De La Hoya was. For this reason, I don’t see a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight breaking the 2.4 million PPV record that Mayweather and De La Hoya set.

It must be a big relief for Mayweather to have the defamation lawsuit out of his hair, because it’s one less than for him to have to worry and he won’t have to keep paying lawyers to deal with this chronic headache.

Mawyeather can now focus on what’s really important by looking to get Pacquiao in the ring. But just because the fighters were able to settle the lawsuit it doesn’t mean that fight can be out together any easier. Michael Koncz, the adviser for Pacquiao, was talking about a 55 percent going to the winner and 45% going to the loser kind of deal and that’s a waste of time. Mayweather is not going to go for that, so if that’s Pacquiao, Koncz and Bob Arum’s idea of negotiating for a fight with Mayweather then they need to not even bother.

Mayweather won’t go for that deal and I don’t blame him. He’s unbeaten, he’s putting up the higher PPV numbers and he easily beat a fighter that Pacquiao arguably lost to three times in Juan Manuel Marquez. I think that proves that Mayweather deserves the much bigger slice of the pie than Pacquiao.