By Manuel Perez:
Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach made a comment to the Sports. Inquirer today that could be a warning shot across the bow for things that could come in the future when Roach said “If he [Pacquiao] retires after this (Cotto) fight I’ll be fine with that.”
In other words, Pacquiao would be retiring after the Cotto fight without having faced Floyd Mayweather Jr. What’s that all about? Is Roach and Pacquiao suddenly getting cold feet about wanting to fight Mayweather? Oh, I’m not surprised if they were, because this would be a terrible way for Pacquiao to go into retirement with a loss against Mayweather.
Yeah, it will be a loss, I guarantee you. Mayweather is another level from Pacquiao and will box his ears off. It won’t even be close. Of course, this is pretty much academic in many boxing circles. But what is suddenly strange to me is Roach talking about Pacquiao retiring without facing Mayweather. That’s a new twist, although not at all surprised if that were to happen.
In the back of my mind, I’ve had a feeling that Pacquiao might opt to retire without facing Mayweather, especially after how impressive Floyd looked in his last fight. I don’t like it that Mayweather was much bigger than Marquez and came over the catch weight limit, but I can’t take anything away from Mayweather. He would have won the fight anyway, so I’m not going to complain about his win. He looked great.
Roach adds, “If negotiations with Mayweather fail and Manny wins against Cotto, he’ll be having seven world titles. Nobody has done that before, so there’s nothing else to prove.”
Man, give me a break. If the negotiations fail, it will likely because someone didn’t want this fight enough to make it happen. This fight is perfectly doable. All Pacquiao needs to do is take the lesser cut of the revenue and there’s no problem. Mayweather is the big pay-per-view attraction in this one. He showed that with his 1 million buys in the Marquez fight. Yes, a lot of the buys came from Mexicans like me, but Marquez couldn’t have done that without Mayweather being part of it. Mayweather’s status and greatness is what made it so successful in the boxing world. The Pacquiao-Marquez fight didn’t do nearly as good as the Mayweather-Marquez fight.
That tells you that Mayweather is the star attraction in this fight. Alright, so if this fight doesn’t get made, I’m thinking it will because Pacquiao and his team want too much money. Just let Mayweather take the bigger slice, it’s okay. Give him 55% to 60%, and this fight is a done deal.
Do I think that’ll happen? No. Pacquiao will probably be stubborn about it and retire rather than take the smaller cut. In a way, it really doesn’t matter all that much. Pacquiao has a fight against Cotto on November 14th, and if Pacquiao loses like I think he will, a fight against Mayweather will be out of the question. Mayweather won’t fight him and will go after Cotto next. And if Pacquiao does end up fighting Mayweather, naturally, Pacquiao would then be taking the smaller share of the purse given his loss to Cotto.
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