Floyd Mayweather now has upper hand in negotiations for highly-anticipated bout with Manny Pacquiao -- New York Daily News

By Tim Smith, New York Daily News

A fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao is all anyone in boxing can talk about now that Mayweather beat Shane Mosley and Pacquiao won a congressional seat in the Philippines. Everyone except Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter.

While saying that he is going to do his "darndest to make the fight," Arum has taken a vow of silence when it comes to talking about the upcoming negotiations. That's what he told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday afternoon, a day after returning from the Philippines where he helped Pacquiao in his successful bid for congress.

Here's what we know: The fight would happen on Nov. 13 at either Cowboys Stadium in Dallas or at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Arum said Pacquiao is going to fight on that date with or without Mayweather. We know that Mayweather said there is no fight if Pacquiao doesn't agree to Olympic style drug testing. We also know that Pacquiao, who said he was needle-phobic, didn't want to do blood testing and that killed the last negotiation.

With that background the next thing I want to hear from Arum is: "The deal is done and the fight is on."

If neither side says a word between now and then, I'm fine with that. It is obvious that both sides running back and forth to the media during the first negotiations led to hardened feelings and ultimately killed the deal. Pacquiao filed a lawsuit against Mayweather, his father, Floyd Sr., his uncle and trainer, Roger, saying that they defamed him by saying that he was a steroids user.

Arum said the lawsuit is still pending and is in play. Ostensibly that will be part of the new negotiations.

If they pick up where the old negotiations left off then the drug testing issue is the only sticking point. But a lot has changed since then. Both boxers have fought and won.

Pacquiao dominated Joshua Clottey in a match where Cowboys Stadium was the main attraction. The fight was a letdown. Before the first negotiations for the fight went off track, Richard Schaefer, Golden Boy CEO who works with Mayweather, cancelled a visit to Dallas to tour Cowboys Stadium. Mayweather loves fighting in Vegas and Schaefer has a loyalty to the MGM Grand.

Mayweather is probably going to come at the new negotiations from a different standpoint. He dominated Shane Mosley, who was No. 3 on most people's Pound-for-Pound list and was viewed as his first legitimate opponent at welterweight.

The result of the two fights has given Mayweather the upper hand in the negotiations, and it could re-open the issue of the financial splits. In the previous deal, the two had agreed to a 50-50 split on the revenue. Mayweather may try to press his status as the sport's top Pay Per View attraction.

Mayweather holds the all-time boxing PPV record for his fight against Oscar De La Hoya, which did over 2.4 million buys and generated $137 million.

Mayweather has now been involved in the two-highest grossing non-heavyweight boxing PPV events ever. That puts Mayweather in the driver's seat with Pacquiao, whose two highest PPV fights were against De La Hoya (1.25 million) and Miguel Cotto (1.2 million).

The other big issue is whether Pacquiao's congressional duties will interfere with his preparation for a proposed fight. Arum said Pacquiao won't have any problems balancing his congressional duties with his boxing preparation. The Philippine congress is in session in July and then takes two months off.

"When he is training, he runs in the morning, sleeps, goes to the gym, eats, then has his free time," Arum said. "His free time will now be devoted to his political responsibility. He'll have plenty of time to do his politics."

Arum said he will stick to the media blackout during the negotiations, because he thinks they will be able to get a deal that way.

"A lot of nice things can happen when people negotiate in good faith," he said.

That's true. But there could be a few more issues that come up this time that were resolved the last time, because things have changed now.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if both sides can keep their mouths shut while the negotiations are going on. But for now all indications are that the two best boxers in the world are heading for a showdown in November. And that is indeed good news for boxing.

The next thing I want to hear from both sides is: "The deal is done and the fight is on."

Source: nydailynews.com