By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer sees the latest charity bout offer made by Manny Pacquiao to Floyd Mayweather Jr. as a sure sign of desperation on the Filipino fighters’ part. Schaefer doesn’t see Pacquiao as being in a position of strength at this point in his career with him having lost 2 out of his last 3 fights, and coming off of one of the worst pay-per-view bouts for him many years in his fight with Brandon Rios last November.
That fight drew only 475,000 PPV buys. Schaefer sees Pacquiao’s charity fight offer to Mayweather as a classic sign of a fighter showing how desperate he is.
“Desperate people take desperate actions,” Schaefer said to RingTV. “My good friend Floyd is not desperate, but Pacquiao and his promoter [Bob Arum] are. Maybe Manny needs a tax write off to solve his tax issues.”
Mayweather hasn’t commented about Pacquiao’s offer of a charity fight, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to bother accepting the offer.
It’s interesting to note that Pacquiao isn’t offering to give away his entire purse for his fight against Tim Bradley on April 12th. It’s just the Mayweather fight that Pacquiao is offering to give away all of his money to charity.
The tax write-off possibility is something that not too many people have touched on, but it’s actually something that Pacquiao could do if he were to give all of the money he made from a Mayweather fight to charity. So in a big way, a Mayweather bout would still benefit Pacquiao even if he were to give every penny of it away. Pacquiao’s fans have seen his offer to give all the money for a Mayweather fight as a noble act, but if Pacquiao is able to use this as tax write off, as Schaefer mentions, it would actually still benefit Pacquiao to fight Mayweather even if he gave away every penny to charity. Of course, Pacquiao can always counter that idea by Schaefer by saying he won’t use it as a tax write off, but how would people know whether he would or not without seeing his tax records?
Arum is supposed to make an announcement today for the Pacquiao-Bradley II rematch on April 12th. It’s going to be interesting to see how many boxing fans that will pay to see this fight when there really shouldn’t even be a rematch given that Pacquiao clearly beat Bradley in June of 2012. But let’s be real about this; there would probably be a rematch even if Pacquiao beat Bradley. Both guys are with Top Rank, and Arum doesn’t have too many other cards in his deck at this point as far as opponents for Pacquiao other than bringing Bradley back for a rematch with him. If the fight does well on PPV, then guess who Pacquiao will be fighting in September? You got it. Bradley will likely be back for a third fight. I expect it to go like this until the fight stops making money.
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