By Lance Pugmire, Los Angeles Times
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is still pushing for a mega-fight with Manny Pacquiao, but key people around Pacquiao said Friday the Filipino star fighter's focus has shifted to a replacement foe, Joshua Clottey.
"If you concede to whatever Mayweather wants, that's giving him an edge," Pacquiao's trainer Freddie Roach said Friday. "We're bigger than Mayweather. We don't need him. We don't work for him.
"So, the way I feel now, we'll go fight Clottey, then we'll fight the winner of [Shane] Mosley and [Andre] Berto."
Welterweight Clottey (35-3) lost a close 2009 fight to Miguel Cotto, who was subsequently defeated by Pacquiao via a 12th-round technical knockout in November. "It'll be a tough fight, not an easy fight, but better than some of the other names that were being thrown around," Roach said.
Behind the scenes, however, there is still movement in the Pacquiao and Mayweather camps to try to bridge the dividing line in their negotiations over when pre-fight random blood tests for performance-enhancing drugs should stop.
Pacquiao agreed to a blood test 24 days before a Mayweather bout planned for March 13 in Las Vegas, and another sample immediately after the bout. Mayweather wants the final blood test to come 14 days before the fight. "Isn't that reasonable?" asked Mayweather promoter, Richard Schaefer.
And Clottey, one Pacquiao confidant admitted, is a high-risk, low-dollar fight.
So there is a push to pitch Mayweather's blood test plan to Pacquiao once more before he arrives back in the U.S. to begin training Monday at Roach's Hollywood gym. Roach also said, "Mayweather can still say he's OK with the 24 days, and the fight's back on, right?"
That's not the case, according to Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum. "We have moved on. We don't want to talk about Mayweather anymore until the fall."
Schaefer is urging Mayweather-Pacquiao talks to continue, admitting a deal needs to be struck soon because of training schedules. Schaefer said, "the fight is so publicized, and being asked for by the public that it doesn't need our usual promotional push."
Arum's response: "He wants talks to continue. Who is he going to be talking to?"
lance.pugmire@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Source: latimes.com
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