Writer thinks some voters will withhold support of Mayweather in getting into Boxing Hall of Fame if he doesn’t face Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 12/10/2014 - Comments

floyd88888By Chris Williams: Yahoo Sports writer Kevin Iole believes that a numbers of voters will opt to withhold their vote for boxing great Floyd Mayweather Jr if he doesn’t face Manny Pacquiao before he retires from the sport.

In other words, the voters will supposedly hold it against Mayweather just because he doesn’t choose to face an opponent that he’s twice attempted to face already in the past.

Iole still thinks Mayweather will get voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, but he sees some of the voters choosing to not vote him in because he didn’t fight Pacquiao.

“If Mayweather finishes his career with a perfect record, as seems likely, but doesn’t fight Pacquiao, which also seems likely, he’ll never get fully away from it. There will be a significant number of voters who will withhold support from him for the International Boxing Hall of Fame for not facing the best opponent of his era,” Iole said in his column at Sports.yahoo.com.

If some of the voters choose not to vote for Mayweather then that’s on them, but you can’t expect Mayweather to bend to the whims of certain Hall of Fame voters just because he doesn’t fight this or that fighter. Mayweather previously attempted to face Pacquiao in 2010, and the negotiations went nowhere.

You can’t put the blame squarely into Mayweather’s lap for the fight not taking place. He tried but it just didn’t work out. Mayweather later made an offer to fight Pacquiao in 2012, but the fight failed to happen then as well.

Right now it’s very difficult to see a Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight taking place due to the two of them being so far apart in terms of pay-per-view buys.

Pacquiao’s last fight against Chris Algieri did just a little over 300,000 pay-per-view buys, according to Rick Glaser. In the meantime, Mayweather’s pay-per-view buys are still near the 1 million buys area. If you do the math it means that Mayweather could ask for a much larger split in a fight against Pacquiao.

The question is would Pacquiao be willing to accept a purse split of say 75-25 or 70-30 to face Mayweather at this point in their careers, or would Pacquiao insist on a 60-40 split or better. The problem is it’s doubtful that Mayweather would be willing to agree to giving Pacquiao a 60-40 split or better based on his recent PPV buys, and I’m not sure that Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum would ever agree to a purse split of less than 60-40 for a Mayweather fight.



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