Floyd Mayweather's adviser: 'Clock is ticking' on negotiations with Manny Pacquiao -- Grand Rapids Press

By David Mayo, The Grand Rapids Press

Manny Pacquiao’s representatives appeared ready today to pull the plug on a proposed Floyd Mayweather fight March 13, while Mayweather’s camp still held out hope for an 11th-hour resolution.

Neither side moved significantly on the drug-testing issue that has hampered Mayweather-Pacquiao talks, and Pacquiao’s promoter told a newspaper and a Web site early today that he is pursuing other options.

Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s adviser, said “the time is coming” when both parties will have to head in opposite directions and abandon a Mayweather-Pacquiao proposal now only 2 1/2 months away.

“The clock is ticking,” Ellerbe said today. “It’ll get resolved, one way or another. Either he (Pacquiao) is going to step up to the plate or he isn’t.”

Still, Ellerbe said Mayweather is holding out hope for that resolution to come this week, in time for a fight announcement next week.

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” Ellerbe said.

If the fight is not finalized this week, it indeed will be over, Ellerbe acknowledged, with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day theoretically cutting into that work week.

“Holidays mean nothing, you know that,” he said. “We always work holidays.”

It may be over already, though.

Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, who is vacationing in Mexico, did not return a telephone message from The Press this afternoon, but told the Los Angeles Times that he anticipates switching focus to negotiations for Pacquiao to fight Yuri Foreman, the World Boxing Association super welterweight title-holder whom he also promotes.

The Times quoted Arum as saying that both camps’ positions “are hardening,” and it may be best to revisit Mayweather-Pacquiao for later next year, although it said he acknowledged a remote possibility that those positions could soften.

Arum told the Times that he had not heard back from the Mayweather camp pertaining the possibility of the Nevada Athletic Commission presiding over drug testing for the fight, as usually occurs with a fight in that state.

Arum also told the Web site Examiner.com that he had not been able to contact Pacquiao in The Philippines regarding the Mayweather camp’s final position and said “this thing ain’t gonna happen. That is for sure."

E-mail David Mayo at dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo

Source: mlive.com