Roach: We’ve got to antagonize Mayweather to get him to negotiate

By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach says that he believes that he and his fighter Manny Pacquiao needs to antagonize WBA/WBC 147 pound champion Floyd Mayweather Jr in order to get him to come to the negotiating table to face the 36-year-old Pacquiao. Roach says he told Pacquiao to keep talking about Mayweather because he believes that it’ll eventually lead to a fight against him.

It’s unknown if Roach’s strategy will work because it seems too transparent, and it reeks of desperation on his and Pacquiao’s part. Simply bringing up Mayweather’s name 24/7 very could have the opposite effect of sending Mayweather in the opposite direction, because it makes Pacquiao and Roach seem desperate in the eyes of some boxing fans.

It makes them look desperate for a payday, especially when Pacquiao’s recent fights against Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios brought in less than impressive pay-per-view numbers.

We still don’t know what kind of PPV numbers Pacquiao’s recent fight against Chris Algieri brought in on HBO, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the numbers were less than 400,000 PPV buys.

“We’ve gotta antagonize this guy to get him to come to the table, I think,” Roach said via the Dailynews. “So Manny’s talking and I told Manny, ‘Manny, you keep doing that commercial. Do that every time you talk to somebody from the press. Because then they can write something about how bad you want the fight. But if you don’t say nothing, they can’t write nothing.’”

Mayweather obviously knows what Roach and Pacquiao are trying to do, and I doubt that he’s going to be tricked into agreeing to a fight, especially if it means that he’s going to need to do business with Bob Arum.

In the same interview, Roach was said to believe that a 60-40 purse split is something that he felt would get the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight made. I’m not so sure if Mayweather would be willing to give Pacquiao 40% of the cut. With Pacquiao losing to Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez, and with his recent fights not bringing in big numbers on PPV, it would be surprising if Mayweather would be willing to give Pacquiao a 60/40 cut. I think Mayweather would likely be agreeable to a 65-35 split, but not a 60-40. That’s a split that’s too generous for Pacquiao, and it wouldn’t give Mayweather a big enough payday to make the fight worthwhile.