We couldn't even make it through one whole week of 2012 without the back-and-forth regarding the never-ending story of the greatest fight to never happen. Not one week. Floyd Mayweather is not going to prison and will be announcing his opponent for his May fight sooner than later, Manny Pacquiao will likely be finalizing a fourth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez under the smokescreen that three other fighters are being considered, and once again, as it has been in many instances for the past two and a half years, Bob Arum has found another way to weasel out of making this fight happen. Unlike in previous years though, now everybody is seemingly on to his game.
When Mayweather was originally sentenced, Arum went on the record trying to push Pacquiao to take a date in May, and while he never outright said May 5th, it was widely assumed that he'd try to put Pacquiao in Vegas on the traditionally biggest day of the sport. Then last Friday happened, and now Arum is again trying to do damage control by backtracking as much as he can, but this time, with only a few days of padding between the statements he's made regarding Pacquiao's availability in May, there is very little he can do at all.
Now everybody, from Dan Rafael to Chris Mannix, all of the usual pom-pom wavers are now turning against Arum, and even the general public are finally hearing what we here at FightHype have been trying to tell you all along...Arum is the obstacle preventing Mayweather vs. Pacquiao from happening. There are no more excuses, no more blaming Mayweather for purse demands or additional testing, whatever...it's all out in the open now.
Mayweather's availability to fight on May 5 put pressure on Arum to make the Pacquiao fight, so he rolled back to the original excuse he made a few months ago, and that is the condition of Pacquiao's cut. While Pacquiao's cut was no small scratch, it isn't a bad enough cut for him to sit and heal for six or seven months. It also doesn't help that the surgeon that worked on Pacquiao's eye, who coincidentally is dating Arum's stepdaughter, said he'd be good to go for sparring around April 1. Vitali Klitschko's four cuts of legend from his war with Lennox Lewis required over 60 stitches to close, yet he was back in the ring six months later fighting Kirk Johnson. Pacquiao's cut only required 28 stitches, yet Arum insists it's too risky for him to go into training five months after.
You'd figure all it would take is for Pacquiao to tell his boss to make the fight or kiss his ass, but the best he's ever come up with is along the lines of, "I'd like to fight Floyd, but it's up to my boss." Some would say Pacquiao could very well go the route that Oscar De La Hoya and Mayweather did before him did and just buy out his contract with his promoter. Unfortunately, that's a little hard to do, especially when you're asking your promoter for advances and you may soon be forced to spend anywhere between $15-20 million on the eve of a Gubernatorial campaign.
Essentially, Pacquiao simply can't escape Arum. His attempt to price himself out of a fourth Marquez fight, requesting a $28 million payday, may just backfire and Arum will either give him the money or tack on a contract extension for good measure. Not to mention, Pacquiao's leeches will encourage him to take whatever money is offered immediately, just to bankroll their own standards of living. Even Freddie Roach has taken the appearance of a yes man to Arum, just going with the flow and making noise when the money is short.
As a matter of fact, Pacquiao's passiveness on the matter in total can be seen as him just playing along with the script and not wanting to disturb his cash flow. I'm sure Pacquiao wants to fight Mayweather, but I'm also sure he's more than fine making the money he has been making and doesn't want that to stop if he can't have one fight. For somebody who holds a political office in his other profession, he sure seems to relish in the part of being a puppet. I wonder how that bodes on him for his future political career?
The next laughable excuse coming up from Arum is the matter of a new venue that has to be built to house the mega-event, which he says would be somewhere around the Wynn Resort. I honestly never heard about it until Arum brought it up the other day, so unless Top Rank is funding the stadium themselves there's a good chance it doesn't exist, and it never will. Plus, if Arum is sincere about having the fight in a bigger venue, why not think like a psychopath and go for the Las Vegas Speedway, which has a capacity for over 140,000 spectators? The MGM Grand is fine enough as is, and if Pacquiao-Marquez IV were to happen in Dallas, it will re-enforce that notion all the much so.
At least there is light at the end of the tunnel because Arum said that he'll have no trouble trying to make the fight in November...a good two months after Mayweather gets out of prison. When that comes around, there will be the excuses that there isn't enough time to promote the fight, Mayweather can't be ready in two months and neither can Pacquiao, Arum's "stadium" can't be built, Mayweather is asking for too much money, a fifth Marquez fight is being considered, and the list goes on. Let's nip it at the bud and avoid the headache early, so here is what's going to happen after their respective fights this spring/summer. Pacquiao will fight Timothy Bradley or Brandon Rios this November, or simply retire, Mayweather will possibly fight again in December, and when the year goes by, the whole collective will be crying and moaning again that they didn't fight. Hopefully now, in light of recent events, everybody can see that it's all the machinations of a greedy old promoter who continues plying his trade in making money at the expense of the people who make it for him.
Danny Howard can be reached for comment at dhoward@fighthype.com, Facebook or Twitter (@DBHOWARD126).