Now that it’s Manny Pacquiao fight
week, it's this faction’s turn to explain to the public why it bears no fault
that a fight with Floyd Mayweather is still yet to be consummated. Last week,
Kevin Iole penned this story on Yahoo! Sports on how a 50/50 financial
split was agreed upon long ago by the two parties: yahoo.com/nmayweather-pacquiao-nearly-agreed.
Bob Arum told Maxboxing,
“See, he's now stuck. [Mayweather]'s saying, ‘That was then; this is now.’
Well, before the end of 2009 going into 2010, he had appreciably better numbers
than Pacquiao because the Mayweather-[Oscar] De la Hoya fight did double [the
average] before. Since then, Pacquiao's numbers have been better. I know what
the [Victor] Ortiz number was. We've done better; we've done more pay-per-view
buys from the beginning of 2010 to 2011 and we haven't had the 2012 fight yet.
We've done more pay-per-views then they have; we've done bigger gates, sold
more tickets. But the point is, all of that is irrelevant because like Joe
Frazier said, when people said to him, ‘How can you ask for the same amount of
money [Muhammad] Ali is asking for because Ali is more popular?’ He said, ‘Let
me ask you one thing. People want to see Frazier and Ali fight, right?’ [A]
reporter said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Without Frazier, there ain't no fight.’”
Eventually, they went on to
split the money down the middle and engaged in the “Fight of the Century” on
March 8th, 1971.
“When it's so close and so
forth, this isn't like a Pacquiao and Bradley or Mayweather and even a Cotto.
It's not like that,” explained Arum. “Those aren't parity fights. This
is a parity fight. The only reason why he has now brought this up after
two years of everybody accepting it as 50/50 is because there are no more
issues. He relied on the testing issue- and it's not true- we've said, ‘OK,
we'll do the testing but cut it off at two weeks before,’ and Al Haymon agreed.
[Golden Boy CEO] Richard Schaefer agreed; everybody agreed but Mayweather
wouldn't do it.”
Perhaps Arum is saying this
now as he braces for an event which has the very good possibility of not doing
the usual numbers associated with a Pacquiao pay-per-view event. Regardless,
you get the sense that unless it's 50/50, you will not see Pacquiao and
Mayweather in the ring together anytime soon.
And speaking of the testing
issue, just which organization would be used in the event a fight between the
two titans is agreed upon?
“This would be the only
issue on testing procedures; it doesn't matter if it's VADA or USADA, the
testing,” said Arum. “But we would insist that whoever did the testing, it would
be under the supervision of the Nevada Athletic Commission so that all reports
or all excuses were made to the commission and so forth. Because otherwise,
it's just cowboys and Indians, people without any legal authority.”
(And that's the last and
only time Pacquiao-Mayweather will be discussed under this byline this week.)
