By Chris Williams: Roger Mayweather was happy to see Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) finally end his two-fight losing streak last Saturday night against Brandon Rios in Macao, China, although it was disappointing that Pacquiao’s win came against a fighter who was coming off of a loss. Roger wants Pacquiao to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. so that he can finally get this fight out of the way after all these years.
Roger thinks that boxing fans will want to see the fight because they think that Pacquiao has turned his career around. Unfortunately, Roger doesn’t speak for Floyd Jr., so whether he wants the fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather Jr. or not, it’s not going to change things unless the two fighters both want it.
Roger said to esnewsreporting.com “It’s a good thing because now it opens the door for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. It brings his name back. He can fight Floyd, because that’s the mother-**** he needs to fight. Floyd has too much skill to me. If you want to make real money, that’s the mother**** you should fight.”
I don’t know how much Pacquiao wanted the fight with Mayweather the first time that they attempted to negotiate a bout together. Pacquiao failed to agree to what Mayweather asked in the negotiations and that prevented the fight from going forward. Also, last year Mayweather offered the fight to Pacquiao again, but Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, started talking about a stadium needing to be built and that wiped out any chance of the fight taking place. Mayweather later offered Pacquiao $40 million for a fight, but that didn’t get the job done either.
The good thing now is that Arum seems to be more eager to match Pacquiao up with Mayweather then he did in the past. With Arum’s Top Rank stable offering very little in the way of interesting fights for Pacquiao now, Mayweather is pretty much the only real option unless you want to see Pacquiao fight Brandon Rios, Juan Manuel Marquez or Tim Bradley again. Those are pretty much what Pacquiao has to look forward to fighting for the remainder of his career. The only new blood I can see mixed in with those names is Ruslan Provodnikov and Mike Alvarado. I don’t see those are being highly interesting fights involving Pacquiao. That’s why I think it’s in Arum’s best interest to try and make the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight now rather than trot out Bradley, Marquez, Rios, Alvarado and Provodnikov as the guys that Pacquiao fights for the remainder of his career.
Pacquiao needs a real opponent because it’s been four years since his last interesting bout when he fought Miguel Cotto at a catch-weight. All of Pacquiao’s fight since then have been disappointing match-ups against Joshua Clottey, Shane Mosley, Marquez, Antonio Margarito, Bradley and Rios. I don’t know why Pacquiao hasn’t complained about it because I wouldn’t be too happy if that was all that Arum was offering me in terms of opponents for the last four years. The Marquez fights were interesting the first two times, but having Arum put that same fight together four times has been overkill, and it just makes it look like he doesn’t have any other real options for Pacquiao. That’s why Arum needs to finally put the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight together before both of these guys age out.
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