By David Mayo, The Grand Rapids Press
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao apparently will fight the same day now. And MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and Cowboys Stadium in suburban Dallas, apparently both will get fights on March 13, just as both sought all along.
But Mayweather and Pacquiao will not fight each other.
So that’s the zany, crazy, absurd upshot to the botched negotiations for Mayweather-Pacquiao, that both men could fight in competing pay-per-view bouts on the same night, further muddling the possibility of boxing’s biggest possible fight occurring later this year, after their own fight failed to materialize because of the drug-testing issue everyone has endured for weeks.
The scheduling snafu arose over the weekend, almost as quickly as Mayweather-Pacquiao talks seemed to reach fruition, before falling irreparably apart.
It is bad for boxing, bad for HBO -- which must choose which fighter to televise -- and bad form, altogether.
The problem arose when Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, quickly pulled together an attractive substitute fight for the the Filipino star against dangerous Joshua Clottey. After Arum’s discussions with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones failed to produce a fight in the new Arlington, Texas, stadium, Pacquiao-Clottey was placed there instead.
Arum said he was targeting March 20 for Pacquiao’s new date. Mayweather continued to eyeball March 13.
Then, Arum moved back.
And Mayweather, whose opponent will be named within a matter of days, refused to budge.
What would make most sense is if HBO Pay-Per-View showed Pacquiao-Clottey from Texas, then Mayweather-T.B.A. from Las Vegas, as part of one megashow. But that would require extraordinary coordination from the competing promoters, Top Rank and Golden Boy, even under the most cooperative circumstances.
These hardly have been the most cooperative circumstances.
Now, here’s the problem: One fight will outperform the other if they both go the pay-per-view route, probably by a substantial margin. Whichever one HBO opts to televise probably will be the winner, simply because of its ability to promote via its regular network, although Top Rank has produced several pay-per-view shows itself, in the event Pacquiao-Clottey is the fight the network spurns.
Mayweather’s side consistently has said it has the better draw, that the Grand Rapids native’s pay-per-view fights against common opponents have outdrawn Pacquiao’s by substantial margins. And that is correct.
Pacquiao’s side argues that its man is the pound-for-pound king, has fared better against the biggest of common opponents -- stopping Oscar De La Hoya when Mayweather couldn’t, and knocking out Ricky Hatton in two rounds when it took Mayweather 10 -- and that, too, is correct.
Both sides extrapolate out those arguments in taking the position that their man deserves more money.
And in the original Mayweather-Pacquiao talks, both sides set aside those positions and agreed to a 50-50 purse split.
As it turned out, money wasn’t the sticking point in making Mayweather-Pacquiao.
Both men appear set to fight March 13, one will escalate the boast that he is the bigger pay-per-view seller, and the likelihood of that 50-50 split being part of their next negotiation almost certainly vanishes.
It’s good that Mayweather and Pacquiao are fighting March 13, as everyone wanted all along.
But the way it apparently will happen not only constitutes a petty effort to undercut each other, but also threatens the possibility that we ever see the two pound-for-pound claimants share the same ring on the same night.
E-mail David Mayo at dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
No comments:
Post a Comment