Over the last few years Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have essentially played ping pong with who deserves blame for a superfight between them never getting put together. In a strange way, it’s felt as though the pair put more effort into shifting culpability for why this bout hasn’t happened than actually working towards making it happen.
On Tuesday, Pacquiao made the gesture of all gestures to show that he really wanted this match.
In face of non-stop doubt about how much he really wants to fight his undefeated arch rival, what with his noted flip-flop on purse split and all, Pacquiao offered the biggest olive branch we’ve seen offered up to this point: 70 percent of the pay-per-view (PPV) money from the fight to the winner of the showdown.
According to GMA News, Pacquiao’s business people have extended a very legitimate proposal that, if Mayweather truly wants to fight the Filipino champion, he’ll have a lot of trouble turning down. The details:
Team Pacquiao has reached out to Floyd Mayweather Jr. with an offer of 70 percent of the pay-per-view (PPV) money going to the winner of a possible bout between Manny Pacquiao and the undefeated American fighter, Pacquiao business advisor Rex "Wakee" Salud confirmed to GMA News Online.
The 70-30 split is the latest in the back-and-forth negotiations between the two factions, as money has become the latest stumbling block to getting the fight, boxing fans all over the world wanted to see, off the ground.
So far Mayweather has rejected an offer for a 55-45 split (winner gets the majority portion), and instead has demanded that Pacquiao take a $40 million guaranteed and no PPV intake. It was a sort of ridiculous offer, and Bob Arum proved this much when he offered Mayweather $50 million so long as Pacquiao keeps the PPV dough.
This most recent offer, though, it’s one that Mayweather really has no justification for rejecting. If he truly does want to fight Pacquiao and really does believe that he’s the world’s No. 1 fighter, then why wouldn’t he take this deal?
For a long time, Mayweather and his supporters maintained that despite the way Pacquiao and Top Rank were trying to paint him in the media, he wasn’t scared to fight anyone. That the performance-enhancing drug (PED) testing and the money demands and the whatever else were all reasonable concerns, not just excuses.
Well, if that’s the case, the undefeated superstar should seemingly jump at Pacquiao’s offer. Unless he’s scared, of course. But if he is scared and tries to weasel out of this, he better realize that the boxing community has eyes and sees how excellent this most recent proposition is. And if he turns this latest deal down, he should prepare to hear the “ducking” charge from a lot more people than were labeling him with it the first time around.
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