By David Mayo, The Grand Rapids PressFloyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao live at the center of the most-asked question in boxing, about a fight that failed to be arranged once, seems no closer to being arranged now, and remains the subject of more speculation than most events in any sport. The question is simple: Will it happen?
Popular theory holds that Mayweather-Pacquiao is like a monolithic bank -- too big to fail -- except it already failed once, and frankly the only reason to believe it won't fail this time is that the two sides have so much more time to work toward a resolution than last time.
Over the four weeks since Mayweather annihilated Shane Mosley, rampant speculation has it that too much money is at stake for Mayweather-Pacquiao not to happen, that the fight will get made for Nov. 13, and that underground negotiations between the parties already have begun, to the exclusion of media.
That's all fine, except for a few hitches, any or all of which could sink the fight, just as happened in the failed December and January talks.The most-asked question in boxing is the one I'm asked more than anything these days.
In the course of the past few weeks, a few non-newsworthy items have gotten treatment as being newsworthy. Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, spoke to the media about negotiations to tell them he wouldn't be speaking to the media about negotiations anymore. Leonard Ellerbe and Richard Schaefer, both representing Mayweather, said there wasn't much to talk about right now anyway, because their man planned to take a nice break after his 12-round demolition of Mosley on May 1.
Pacquiao won a congressional election in The Philippines, which is newsworthy enough, but has little to do with making a fight against Mayweather for undisputed pound-for-pound supremacy.
Mayweather is under consideration to replace Lennox Lewis as an HBO analyst.
And Theartha Mayweather Jr., oldest brother of Floyd Mayweather Sr., Roger Mayweather and Jeff Mayweather -- and the only one among those who didn't make his name off boxing -- died here last week, after a lengthy illness.
Then there was the one single tidbit of promising information relative to making the fight: Pacquiao, after waffling out of the fight last winter over his demand that no blood testing occur within 24 days of the fight, yielded to Mayweather, who waffled out of the first negotiations by demanding that the blood-testing cutoff be set at 14 days beforehand.
Only one problem: Mayweather said months ago, well before beating Mosley, that his 14-day cutoff window isn't in play anymore, and that blood testing must be allowed right up until the fight.
He also said that if his fight with Mosley did big business, the original financial agreements -- which weren't a problem at all -- would come off the table, and he would require an edge in the monetary split before agreeing to the fight.
So some recent indignation when Mayweather did exactly what he said he would -- demanded more money than Pacquiao, and asked that the 14-day window be closed -- is a bit disingenuous.
One man's opinion, but the 14-day window probably remains workable. Mayweather-Mosley was conducted under guidelines that allowed for blood testing right up until the fight, yet there was none in those final two weeks, so establishing that cutoff for Mayweather-Pacquiao probably would have no effect. And even if either fighter lived on intravenous performance enhancers in the final two weeks before the fight, the possibility of tangible gains -- and not getting nabbed in post-fight testing -- virtually would be nonexistent.
There are enough other obstacles to create enormous concern, however.
The concept that boxing needs Mayweather-Pacquiao and is in something of a holding pattern until it happens seems accurate enough.
As for the popular theory that it's a foregone conclusion, well, that's just uninformed.
E-mail David Mayo: dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
