Floyd Mayweather Jr. decided to have a little bit of fun today on twitter at the expensive of Manny Pacquiao in sending out a humorous post making fun of Pacquiao’s interest in fighting him. Mayweather shows one recent episode in his dealings with Pacquiao where he offered him $40 million to fight him, and was turned down. Pacquiao wanted a 50-50 deal, and not the $40 million offered to him by Mayweather.
From Mayweather’s standpoint, Pacquiao would have come out ahead if he had taken the fight with him and the $40 million, because what happened after that was Pacquiao getting knocked out in the 6th round by Juan Manuel Marquez last December. However, Pacquiao had no way of knowing that he would get crushed by Marquez and end up missing almost an entire year before coming back against Brandon Rios. Who knows? If Pacquiao could see the future, he might have said yes to the Mayweather fight instead of turning it down to face Marquez. Pacquiao would have likely been a farther ahead at this point if he had fought Mayweather, even if the $40 million wasn’t the 50-50 deal that he wanted.
Pacquiao could taken the money, and then been back in the ring twice in 2013 instead of just once. Pacquiao wouldn’t have needed to waste his time fighting Brandon Rios in a tune-up fight, and could have taken on some better opposition. But then again, Pacquiao probably would have still been stuck fighting Rios because his promoter Bob Arum was already talking about a Pacquiao vs. Rios fight even before Pacquiao’s 4th fight against Marquez last December.
Pacquiao does want the Mayweather fight, but it’s not looking like there’s going to be any progress in making that mega fight take place for the time being. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will need to either get out of the way for that fight to happen or really make a strong concerted effort to convince Mayweather to agree to fighting Manny. Those things are probably not going to happen. Arum won’t step away, Pacquiao probably won’t leave Arum when his contract expires next year, and Arum likely won’t bend over backwards to make a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather happen. Why should he? Pacquiao’s making good money for Top Rank just by fighting Arum’s fighters. It doesn’t matter if Rios, Ruslan Provodnikov and Tim Bradley aren’t stars. The fights are making good money for Top Rank and will probably continue to make excellent money even if that’s all Pacquiao fights for the remainder of his career is those three guys.