By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes that a fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his fighter Manny Pacquiao has a 75 percent chance of happening. Arum seems to have changed his mind about the chances of the Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch happening, because just last Saturday night, he was saying that Mayweather is retired and that he wasn’t sure if a second fight could take place between the two superstars. Arum looks like he’s changed his tune for some reason.
“Floyd called us and asked for tickets,” Arum said to TMZ.com. ”It’s a great sign. I’d love for the fight to happen. I’d make it 75% that it happens.”
Negotiations haven’t started for a rematch between Pacquiao and Mayweather, but Arum sees it as a good sign that contact has been made by Mayweather. Mayweather going to one of Pacquiao’s fights is definitely a good sign. Boxing fans want to see a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao, because some of them believe that Pacquiao wasn’t 100 percent for their previous fight a year ago in 2015.
Pacquiao had a shoulder injury that supposedly kept him at 60 percent of full health. I didn’t see any sign of Pacquiao favoring his injured shoulder. It just looked to me like Pacquiao wasn’t willing to attack Mayweather the way he needed to for him to have a chance of beating him. We saw the same reluctance to attack in Pacquiao’s fight against Jessie Vargas last Saturday. If Pacquiao had attacked nonstop like he used to against his opponents, there’s no way that Vargas would have lasted beyond the 6th.
Vargas looked like he was in the shutdown mode after he was dropped by Pacquiao in the 2nd round. Vargas looked like he wanted no part of fighting offensively after the knockdown. Pacquiao appeared to have taken away Vargas’ will to win the fight with that knockdown. It’s too bad Roach didn’t push Pacquiao to finish Vargas off by attacking him with flurries over and over again in each rounds, because he probably would have stopped him.
A rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao would bring in a lot of money for both fighters. Mayweather would likely make over $100 million and Pacquiao at least $50 million. That’s a lot of green for both fighters.
Mayweather would need to get a nice slice of the financial pie for the rematch against Pacquiao to take place. A fair deal would be in the 55-45 range again with Mayweather getting the bigger cut of the revenue. For Pacquiao to justify asking for an even 50-50 split of the loot, his fight last Saturday night against Jessie Vargas would need to bring in a lot of buys to show that Pacquiao can still bring in a lot of buys. If Pacquiao-Vargas brings in over 1 million buys, then that would help him make a case that he should receive parity of the loot for a Mayweather fight. I do not believe the Pacquiao vs. Vargas PPV numbers will be anywhere near 1 million buys.
It’s definitely a good sign that Mayweather contacted Top Rank to talk to them about attending Pacquiao’s fight last Saturday night. Mayweather said this about Pacquiao’s performance against Vargas: “Not bad!” Mayweather was right. It wasn’t a bad performance by Pacquiao. I gave Pacquiao a ‘C’ grade for his win. I would have given Pacquiao an ‘A’ grade if he’d let his hands go a lot more. Pacquiao was giving Vargas way too much respect by not letting his hands go and staying on the outside. This led to Pacquiao getting hit a lot more than he would have if he’d been on the attack nonstop in the fight. The only time that Vargas was able to land much was when Pacquiao was on the outside and not attacking. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach should have been more direct in the corner by ordering him to attack nonstop. If Pacquiao had done that, he would have knocked Vargas out guaranteed.
Arum needs to take his time when putting together Pacquiao’s next fight. I wouldn’t be in a rush if I were Arum to get Pacquiao signed for his next fight, because Mayweather might be interested in taking the fight. If Arum quickly signs Pacquiao up for a fight against one of his Top Rank stable fighters like Terence Crawford or Vasyl Lomachenko, he could potentially mess up a fight between him and Mayweather. If I’m Arum, I would wait on matching Pacquiao against Crawford until later on. If Pacquiao loses to Crawford, then Arum will have shut the door on a rematch between Pacquiao and Mayweather. There will be no reason for Mayweather to come back to fight Pacquiao a second time. Also, I don’t see Crawford turning into a star from a win over Pacquiao. It’s too late in Pacquiao’s career for Crawford to get much of a bounce from a win over him.