By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz finally came out and said what many boxing fans suspected a long time ago in that there still isn’t a contract for the mega-fight between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. This goes along ways towards what Mayweather said to have told Pacquiao at the Miami Heat game this week when he was quoted as telling the 36-year-old “Stop lying” about there being a contract.
When asked by Philboxing.com if there’s an actual contract for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, Koncz said “No. It’s still a waiting game and there are no developments, nothing.”
There are rumors that the fight will be announced either today or on Sunday during the New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl game. The idea of having it announced during the Super Bowl is in order to take advantage of the 200 million fans that will be watching the fight.
If you can announce the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight during that fight, even if it’s just the two fighters popping into the broadcast booth to talk about the fight, it would give their mega-bout huge publicity for free. It would be done on the cheap. They wouldn’t have to book a 4 minute segment that would cost them millions of dollars. They could just drop into the broadcast booth and start talking.
Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum had both been telling Mayweather recently to “sign the contract” for the fight, which obviously would be an impossible thing for Mayweather to do when all they have floating between them is a simple “deal memo,” according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. You can’t expect Mayweather to sign a deal memo, because that would be like signing an e-mail. It would be totally useless in making the fight a done deal.
It’s unclear what’s left in the negotiations that still need to be agreed on. Supposedly, Koncz has taken care of two issues that Mayweather had problems with in the deal memo negotiations. Whether Koncz actually did take care of the problem is unknown.
Arum is saying that HBO and Showtime negotiations finished up a couple of weeks ago. Again, whether this is true or not is unknown. You would have to think that if all of these issues are taken care of then the only thing they’re waiting on is the perfect time to announce the fight, and I can’t see a better time than during the Super Bowl this Sunday.
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