In what has to be seen as a positive sign that the negotiations are going well, Manny Pacquiao is saying that he expects to make an announcement about his mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr taking place before the end of January. Pacquiao says he thinks the fight will be taking place.
A lot can still happen between now and before the end of the month, but it’s very good news that Pacquiao is saying that he sees the Mayweather fight taking place.

“We will make an announcement before the end of the month” and added “I think it (the fight” will happen,” Pacquiao said via Philboxing.com

The purse split is said to be in the 60-40 range, and the blood testing, venue and date are said to have been worked out already. Mayweather wants it to take place on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. This reportedly is now problem. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum likely wanted the fight to be staged at a big venue like the 90,000 seat Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, but Mayweather likes to fight in his home city of Las Vegas.

The purse split is seen as the toughest thing to agree on, and it’s still unclear whether that’s been fully agreed on. 60-40 is a number that was floated years ago after Pacquiao’s losses to Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez. It doesn’t quite make as much sense now considering that Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers have been steadily dropping in his fights against Brandon Rios, Bradley and Chris Algieri.

Some of that obviously is the poor match-making that Arum has been doing for the 36-year-old Filipino fighter, but some of it also has to be due to declining interest in Pacquiao’s fights. He hasn’t knocked anyone out in six years, and a lot of the mystique and excitement that Pacquiao built up about himself was his ability to KO his opponents. He was like Gennady Golovkin is now back in 2008 and 2009.

The knockouts were coming almost every time Pacquiao fought, and the boxing fans couldn’t get enough of him. However, since his fight against Joshua Clottey in 2010, Pacquiao’s ability to score knockouts have dried up and his quality of opponents have also gone downhill.

Instead of seeing Pacquiao knocking out exciting fighters, fans have had to settle for seeing him fight against over the hill Shane Mosley, Antonio Margarito, as well as Arum’s stable fighters Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios.

Recently, Chris Algieri, a guy with virtually no fan base, was added to the mix and the results were predictable with the PPV numbers reportedly not good. The only real quality fighter that Pacquiao has fought in the last six years is Juan Manuel Marquez, and he knocked Pacquiao out after arguably being robbed in their first three fights.

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