By David Mayo, The Grand Rapids Press I was tipped off two months ago exactly how this second round of Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao talks would happen -- or not happen, as it were. It sounded a bit implausible at the time, although it never left the forefront of my mind as the bombast flowed about negotiations which never happened. Ultimately, that conversation held an eerily accurate reflection on what actually occurred.
More on that in a moment.
First, a fiscal lesson in Boxing Economics 101: Fight purses aren’t based on ability, they’re based on marketability.I didn’t create that saying. The good people at Top Rank, Bob Arum and Todd duBoef, did.
And they’re absolutely correct, going back for decades. Why, after all, did Sugar Ray Leonard get virtual purse equity with Marvelous Marvin Hagler nearly a quarter-century ago, when Leonard had one fight in the previous five years? Because he brought marketability to a fight and transformed it into an event, that’s why.
The promoter for that event?
Top Rank.
So why would anyone believe Mayweather, the one who brings marketability to the Pacquiao proposal and transforms it into an event, and who in the last 10 months may have earned more from two fights than Pacquiao has in his entire boxing career, accept purse equity?
It would be ludicrous and Top Rank, in an admission it never will make, knows it.
Let’s break down, right now, what really happened in this latest round of Mayweather-Pacquiao “negotiations”:
First, Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, relayed through HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg the terms he would find acceptable for making the fight. You can bet they were favorable terms for Pacquiao, which is to say terms Mayweather very well might find onerous. They probably included a 50-50 split in money, or something close to it. Arum steadfastly refused to specify that.
Second, Greenburg relayed those terms to the Mayweather camp, which never responded to them.
Arum might as well have called me to relay the terms. I have all the same phone numbers and could’ve had the same conversations -- or lack thereof.
For weeks thereafter, Arum got a lot of mileage from telling the media he had placed a final proposal before Mayweather, complete with agreeing to the Grand Rapids native’s terms on random blood and urine testing, even though those terms were taken off the table -- publicly -- after the very real negotiations of last winter failed.
Arum, by his own admission, never called Mayweather’s advisers, Leonard Ellerbe or Al Haymon, nor did he call Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions.
My 30-year-old Webster’s New World Dictionary -- the one that one of my dogs tore the cover off of years ago -- defines negotiate as “to confer, bargain, or discuss with a view to reaching a settlement.”
And that Greenburg converses often with the Mayweather camp means absolutely nothing. He would be in the loop on a fight of this magnitude even if he weren’t playing messenger boy.
When it all fell apart, Arum kindly and compassionately suggested that it might be uncle/trainer Roger Mayweather’s legal situation that gave Floyd Mayweather pause, and that he would understand if the fight couldn’t happen until next year for that reason.
That reflected Arum’s true indifference as to whether the fight got made or not.
Oh, if Mayweather had been dumb enough to take a 50-50 split, Arum and Pacquiao would have jumped on it, and the fight would be made.
But there isn’t anyone in Mayweather’s camp stupid enough to even relay that proposal to the fighter for consideration, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Mayweather himself didn’t know the specific terms until well after it had been rejected, or pocket-vetoed, or laughed away -- take your pick.
Failing that, what Arum planned all along was to have two of his own fighters face each other on Nov. 13 -- Pacquiao against either Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito -- which seems the near-certain resolution now.
That keeps all the money in house, gets another probable win for Pacquiao, and keeps him from being exposed to Mayweather for a few more months, if at all.
Now, about that earlier prediction.
In mid-May -- when rumors of Mayweather-Pacquiao talks first surfaced, after Arum set Pacquiao’s next fight date -- Ellerbe told me the rumors were untrue.
Then, Ellerbe went off the record and predicted that Arum didn’t want the fight for November, that he would posture and bluster about it but never actually pursue it in good faith, that Mayweather wasn’t even considering boxing right now anyway, that Arum would use all of that to twist public relations in his favor by saying he tried to get the fight done but Mayweather balked, but that Top Rank ultimately would do exactly what it wanted to do: Have Pacquiao fight either Cotto or Margarito next.
Virtually to the letter, that’s how it happened, and either Cotto or Margarito gets to fight Pacquiao next, because it’s good for Top Rank, not for boxing.
Never mind that Pacquiao destroyed Cotto in a conclusive knockout less than a year ago. Or that Margarito has fought once in the last 18 months, in Mexico, because he isn’t licensed in the U.S. after he was caught loading his gloves with a plaster-like substance before fighting -- and losing to -- Shane Mosley.
When and if there is a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, here’s how it will go down:
Mayweather will say he would like to investigate the possibility of the fight, then lay out his terms. It won’t be a ridiculous, unreasonable split, because if he didn’t want the fight, he doesn’t have to go through the rigamarole of negotiating himself out of it; he simply doesn’t have to negotiate at all. So if he never negotiates at all, you’ll know that’s the case.
But they won’t be 50-50 terms, and they may include random blood testing right up until fight night.
The Mayweather side will be outspoken that it is pursuing the fight, which it never was this time, because it never did. And Pacquiao will have a decision to make.
They won’t be equal terms, nor should they be, because marketability, not ability, is at the root of boxing purse splits.
I didn’t say that.
Top Rank did.
E-mail David Mayo: dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
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