By Robert Brown: In this article I will be discussing a variety of reasons why the biggest grossing fight of all time between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao did not materialize.
If you said to general sports fans who knew nothing about the politics that surrounds the sport of boxing that a fight that would generate well over 100 million dollars could not be agreed upon they would say that you should be certified mentally insane, as it stands this is the situation that we currently have.
In the 80’s Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard fought each other 9 times and in the 70’s we had the great quartet of Heavyweights Ali, Frazier, Foreman and Norton who fought each other on multiple occasions. These days the sport of boxing cannot even organize the richest fight in history between the sports two most marketable fighters, which seems to any sane person and inconceivable prospect.
Boxing fans paying big money for substitutes such as Mayweather / Ortiz and Pacquiao / Clottey is one of the main reasons why we have not seen Pacquiao / Mayweather because promoters know they can make nearly as much money, sometimes more money with alternative bouts than they would with the Pacquiao / Mayweather fight because the promoters don’t have to pay the fighters as much of the split, and using creative and clever marketing perpetrated by programs such as 24/7 people will be successfully manipulated into buying the pay per views, because the alternative bouts are dressed up to be more competitive than they actually are.
What I’m trying to say is promoters don’t have to serve us cream when they can serve us curdled milk and still make a sizable profit. Basically the fans still hold the ultimate power when it comes to making fights happen because if they stop buying the Pay Per View’s pockets would become a little less full and Arum and Mayweather would be forced to come to an agreement in order to make money. Since fans are generally satisfied with less than the best and continue to pay for it, the sad fact is we as boxing fans will continue to get less than we think we deserve.
It seems to me that throughout recent weeks Pacquaio and Mayweather have been more interested in winning the social media war on twitter than proving who is the better man in the squared circle, by trying to convince the majority of the public that one is ducking the other, when in actual fact the majority of both camps fans minds are made up anyway and these manipulative childish games would not make a significant difference in people’s minds.
The fact is this Floyd Mayweather and Bob Arums ego’s clash they are not willing to be seen to have given any ground and there for refuse to come to any reasonable negotiation. Floyd Mayweathers refusal to agree to a 50/50 split is in my mind ridiculous cause they are both big box office draws and deserve an equal split, however I don’t believe it is because Mayweather is afraid of Pacquaio, to me that notion is ridiculous because it has been shown on several occasions in all 3 fights against Marquez that Pacquaio struggles against counter punching fighters with good defense and good foot work and Mayweather has all of those attributes in abundance.
I believe the reason Mayweather would not agree to a 50/50 split is because that would not allow him to get one over on Bob Arum, even if the split was 55/45 I believe there could have been a great a chance of the fight eventuating.
Mayweather needs to understand that the biggest way of validating his ego is destroying his opponent. Between Mayweather trying to inflate his ego and Bob Arum messing around with the dates and arenas these negotiations have become yet another Farce.
Lastly Pacquaio is not without blame, I speak on behalf of the majority of boxing fans when I say with the greatest respect, when a journalist asks Pacquaio who he would like to fight the line, it depends on my promoter Bob Arum does not fly anymore. Pacquaio needs to grow some cojones and demand this fight from his promoter because he makes money for his promoter not the other way around and he needs to learn to take control of his own situation and stop using other people as an excuse.
Without each of these factors I have previously mentioned being resolved this fight will not happen, let’s hope and pray on behalf of everyone in boxing that they will