A week ago Bob Arum, the promoter at Top Rank, called a telephone press conference at 3 a.m. to announce that he didn't have a deal for Manny Pacquiao to fight Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
It was something that Arum could have announced at 3 p.m. any day of the week, because according to the representatives for Mayweather they hadn't even been negotiating with Arum on a proposed fight for Nov. 13 in Las Vegas.
Arum said that Ross Greenburg, the President of HBO Sports, was the go-between and was brokering the deal for the Mayweather side. The way that it worked, at least Arum thought so, was that Arum would tell Greenburg his demands and then Greenburg would relay those demands to Mayweather's representatives, Al Haymon and Leonard Ellerbe and Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions.
"Ross was committed to making the fight happen and as the president of HBO Sports I felt that the best chance of making the fight happen was to do everything through Ross, almost like he was the mediator and I still believe it was the right way to go," Arum said during that conference call. "It obviously didn't work out, not because Ross didn't do a good job because I think he did in talking to Al Haymon and myself. Obviously the problem was Floyd, for whatever reason, and I'm sure he has some valid reason, didn't want to commit."
No. The problem is that Mayweather and his representatives claim they knew nothing about any negotiations, and Greenburg has no comment on any of it. "Here are the facts," Ellerbe, Mayweather's advisor said in a statement issued a couple days after Arum's late night/early morning conference call. "Al Haymon, Richard Schaefer and myself speak to each other on a regular basis and the truth is no negotiations have ever taken place, nor was there ever a deal agreed upon by Team Mayweather or Floyd Mayweather to fight Manny Pacquiao on November 13. Either Ross Greenburg or Bob Arum is not telling the truth, but history tells us who is lying."
That is a shot at Arum, who once famously said, "Yesterday I was lying. Today I'm telling the truth."
Mayweather is on vacation, has been since he beat Shane Mosley back in May. He was spotted in Miami at a basketball camp last week. He is running his own camp at his gym in Las Vegas.
Right after the fight against Mosley, Mayweather said he was going to take a long vacation. I believed him. It took a great deal of psychological energy for him to prepare for the Mosley fight. He always thought that Mosley would present the toughest fight of his career and he trained that way. He is in the process of recharging his batteries and he doesn't even want to think about fighting Pacquiao or anyone else. He will probably start thinking about it again once his kids go back to school.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/07/23/2010-07-23_bob_arums_deal_for_manny_pacquiaofloyd_mayweather_bout_fall_apart_as_tactics_are.html#ixzz0uYvFHHGY
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