By Chris Williams: HBO’s Larry Merchant was telling it like it is early today on ESPN’s “First Take” by explaining why he felt that the Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. mega fight hadn’t happened yet and why he felt it likely wouldn’t happen any time soon.
Merchant sees both Mayweather and Pacquiao as making too much money already fighting other guys, so there’s no real point in them getting together to fight each other for the little bit extra they would get by fighting.
The reason why Pacquiao and Mayweather are able to make huge amounts of money fighting other guys is because they hog the lion’s share of the purse with their less popular opponents, and this allows them to make huge money despite not facing each other.
Merchant said to ESPN “What’s stood in the way of a big Mayweather/Pacquiao fight taking place up to this point is a financial disincentive for both men. Both fighters are already making 40 and 50 million dollars a year fighting lower risk opposition. There’s no financial urgency to make this fight happen. This is a business as well as a sport…People will tune in whenever they fight regardless of their opposition.”
I have to agree with Merchant on this. We’ve seen Pacquiao facing guys like Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and Tim Bradley, all non-pay per view type fighters, and yet Pacquiao was still able to rake in the dough fighting them. And each time an effort was made to try and put together a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather, we’ve seen behavior from Pacquiao’s camp that looked as if they weren’t all that eager to make the fight happen.
In 2010, we saw feet dragging about the random blood tests that Mayweather Jr. wanted, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for in my view. Then earlier this year when Mayweather and Pacquiao attempted to put a fight together again, Arum had a number of excuses that got in the way of the fight being made, such as an outdoor stadium not being ready in time before Mayweather would have to start his jail term and Pacquiao having slow healing cuts.
With Pacquiao making $50 million a year by fighting twice a year, and Mayweather making $40 million per fight, I don’t see them fighting each other, ever. If casual boxing fans are interested in paying to see them fight lesser stars then we’ll likely never see them fight until both are so badly over the hill that boxing fans no longer want to pay to see them fight. Then I guess we’ll see them fight in an old timers fight. It won’t be worth it then.
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