By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao is saying that he wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr for the fans. He wants to give them a gift by giving them the fight they’ve been asking for.
Mayweather, however, believes Pacquiao is desperate for the fight, and wants it for other reasons for help with his finances. Whatever the case, the fight negotiations are still reportedly moving slowly despite Pacquiao urging Mayweather to “sign the contract.”
It’s Pacquiao and his team that are said to have agreed to what Mayweather is asking for in the contract, but we still haven’t heard from Mayweather’s side whether Arum and Pacquiao have agreed to anything he’s asked for in the negotiations. At this point, everything that is being said is pretty much coming from Pacquiao’s team, so it’s hard to see what is real and what is not.
“What my concern is, is to make the fight happen for the fans. Everywhere I go, even in Thailand, every place, the fans are asking, ‘When will this fight happen? When will this fight happen?’ That question is not for me. It’s for Mayweather,” Pacquiao said via Yahoo Sports [http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/boxing/manny-pacquiao—i-hear-there-is-an-understanding–for-a-floyd-mayweather-fight-004257333.html]. Millions of people are asking that question everywhere I go. It’s kind of bothering me, that question. It’s time to make the fight happen. The fans deserve it.”
Well, Pacquiao had the chance to fight Mayweather for the fans in 2009 and 2012, but Pacquiao didn’t agree to what Mayweather was wanted. It’s too bad that Pacquiao didn’t sign the contract for the fans in both of those occasions because he could have given them what they wanted.
How anything will be different this time around is anyone’s guess. While Pacquiao is good at making sound bites about wanting to do it for the fans, he hasn’t produced in the past when Mayweather has attempted to get him into the ring, and that has many boxing fans wondering whether we’ll see the same thing happening again.
Mayweather reportedly wants the fight a great deal according to Sam Watson, a person close with Mayweather’s adviser Al Haymon, but there is a negotiation process going on and Mayweather isn’t going to just give everything away to Pacquiao just because the 36-year-old Filipino is talking elegant with the media about wanting to do it for the fans.
It takes more than that to get a fight like this done. Since the boxing fans aren’t privy to what’s taking place in the negotiations, we can’t really know whether Arum, Pacquiao and his adviser Michael Koncz have agreed to anything Mayweather has asked for in the negotiations, even with the purse split.
Everything is still suspect at this point. But with Mayweather not signing the contract, it gives you a pretty good idea that he’s not getting full cooperation here in the negotiations because if he was we’d have seen his John Hancock on the contract already.
Whether the fight takes place or not is likely going to come down to Arum and Pacquiao giving in to whatever Mayweather is asking for in the negotiations. If it’s a purse split of 70-30, then that obviously will need to be agreed upon before Mayweather puts pen to paper. He has after all the A-side in the negotiations, so it’s pretty much up to him whatever he wants out of the negotiations.
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