By GREG BISHOP
Published: July 26, 2010
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CloseLinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink Surreal negotiations between representatives for Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. included a flap over drug testing, an election in the Philippines, a gag order, a 3 a.m. conference call and a firm denial that the second round of discussions even took place.
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Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
Floyd Mayweather Jr. beat Shane Mosely in May.
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Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
Manny Pacquiao will fight Antonio Margarito next.
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Steve Marcus/Reuters
The suspended fighter Antonio Margarito at a hearing of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. He was barred when a hardened substance was found in his glove before a fight in 2009.
The back-and-forth has produced everything except an actual fight.
Instead, Pacquiao will soon sign an agreement to face Antonio Margarito in November, adding another subplot to the highly anticipated but increasingly unlikely main event.
“This is out of never-never land,” said Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter with Top Rank Boxing. “I’ve seen fights fall apart for all sorts of reasons. But this is the twilight zone.”
Boxing history is filled with such strange sagas, but rarely, if ever, have two fighters who stand to divide some $60 million to $80 million not reached an agreement. For the longtime HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant, this seems “if not unique, then unimaginable.”
The stall has little to do with money. Both boxers were ranked in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Mayweather (No. 31) made $65 million in his last two fights, placing him sixth among athletes and higher than David Beckham and Alex Rodriguez. (Pacquiao was 55th.)
“Usually, when there’s this much money involved, they find a way to split it up,” Merchant said. “But that’s never been an issue here. The appearance is that Pacquiao agreed to virtually all of Mayweather’s demands, and Mayweather couldn’t take yes for an answer.”
Mayweather last fought twice in the same year in 2007, and since his triumph over Shane Mosley in May, he twice stated that he was not thinking about boxing. What Mayweather did not do is issue a formal statement, which seemingly would have ended all the fuss.
Previous negotiations had imploded because Pacquiao balked at Mayweather’s demands for Olympic-style blood testing up until the fight. After those discussions turned acrimonious and public, a gag order went into place.
The sides disagree on what happened next. Arum said Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO Sports, acted as an intermediary between Top Rank and Al Haymon, a Mayweather representative. Greenburg confirmed that for the first time Monday, saying he “had been negotiating with a representative from each side since May 2.”
Arum declined to discuss specifics but said that this time Pacquiao made additional concessions, addressing each of Mayweather’s concerns.
Mayweather did not participate in these talks. Perhaps this information never reached him. Perhaps he disagrees that these were, in fact, negotiations. But Arum and Greenburg dispute that, and Oscar De La Hoya, a Mayweather co-promoter recently, told Univision in June that the fight was “very close.”
Mayweather’s camp declined to comment Monday, but it released a statement July 19 — three days after Arum’s self-imposed fight deadline, which came complete with the early-morning conference call, had passed. The statement denied the existence of negotiations and ominously concluded, “history tells us who is lying.”
Before their falling-out, Arum once promoted Mayweather, and he said that the fighter’s unblemished record (41-0) remained his most important asset. “If he lost that, it would be like dying,” Arum said.
Merchant said it left the question, rightly or wrongly, of whether Mayweather simply does not want to fight Pacquiao, a notion that Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, asserted Monday.
“Whenever you deal with a Mayweather, it’s going to be bizarre,” Roach said. “Let’s face it. He’s playing games, trying to call shots, making his own rules. At this point, I don’t care if we ever fight him. Mayweather is scared to fight us. He can bet on cockfights in Puerto Rico for the rest of his life for all I care.”
Roach was referring to a video that surfaced recently of Mayweather at a cockfight. Roach also recently shelved the Mayweather tapes he had been studying, tapes he said showed Mayweather was “hittable” and “getting older.”
Still, Roach added that each day, someone asked about the potential bout, including a recent inquiry by Sylvester Stallone. Instead, Pacquiao will fight Margarito, a former champion suspended for a year by the California State Athletic Commission after a hardened substance was discovered in his hand wraps before he fought Mosley in 2009.
Potential sites for the bout include Las Vegas, Dallas and Atlantic City, Arum said, but each would require Margarito to obtain a state license. Beyond that, Mosley destroyed Margarito, before Mayweather destroyed Mosley, and now Margarito will fight Pacquiao, with only a lackluster victory against Robert Garcia in between.
Should Margarito fail to obtain a license, Arum said the fight would take place in Monterrey, Mexico. (A long-shot group from the United Arab Emirates also bid.)
Merchant, for one, says Arum could have found a more worthy opponent than Margarito, like Andre Berto, Timothy Bradley, or Juan Manuel Marquez for the third time. Top Rank has been criticized for refusing to make fights outside of its stable, which includes Margarito.
All parties agree that the sport loses if Pacquiao-Mayweather fails to materialize. Merchant said boxing needed its high-profile, glamorous events, its Super Bowls, its routes into the casual sports’ fan’s wallet. Greenburg labeled the dream matchup significant “because of the fighters’ ability to connect with sports fans around the world.”
Arum added, “To have a seminal fight of this kind not happen is a sad, sad thing for the state of boxing.”
Merchant says the fight will happen, but not until next year. Meanwhile, Mayweather, perhaps the single most important entity in this odd drama, remained silent
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