When negotiations began for the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao super fight, I had predicted that Mayweather would hold up the fight due to his massive ego and desire for an unrealistic purse split. For a fighter who calls himself "Money" and constantly refers to himself as the greatest fighter of all time, a parity split of the purse would be like a slap in the face to him, especially against an opponent that he considers being inferior to him. The boxing world would turn around and bash Mayweather and condemn him even further as the fight fell through, his reputation soiled and his ego damaged.
If you are a member of the Pacman Brigade, I advice you to turn away now.
There is absolutely no doubt that Pacquaio has doomed this fight into oblivion and there is nobody to blame but him. If we look at all the facts, Mayweather has been the more cooperative of the two and has diligently accepted all the terms, including a purse split and the March date. Mayweather even agreed to an astonishing $10 million/pound penalty should anybody come over the 147lb weight limit.
The real controversy has stemmed from Pacquiao's unwillingness to cooperate with the idea of Olympic level drug testing based on suspicions from the Mayweather team of possible use of performance enhancers. Of all the wishy-wash excuses I've ever heard, Pacquaio takes the cake by claiming superstition as the reason he will not take random drug tests. My loyal readers, let me ask you this: Even though you are terrified of spiders, wouldn't you let them crawl on you for a million dollars? How about 40 million?
With all the money Pacquiao had to gain, as well as being the definitive best fighter of this generation, it should have been a no-brainer to just accept the tests. Pacquiao is now heading to court suing the Mayweathers for defamation of character. Here I am thinking, "Wouldn't the best evidence be if Pacquiao took the tests and passed?"
There are too many discrepancies with Pacquiao at this point. He'll accept predetermined drug testing, but absolutely will not take it randomly. Whether you believe he's clean or not is out of the question; like it or not, Pacquiao, like many athletes from other sports, now has to prove that he has been clean or else questions about his career will forever linger. Look at Barry Bonds, never convicted or caught cheating, implicated yes, but never caught and Bonds has become one of the most hated figures in baseball and his incredible career achievements are now described by baseball faithful as "Asterisk."
The predicted fallout of this incident will leave doubt to some as to whether Pacquiao has taken steroids over the course of his career to develop. Furthermore, from every fight here on out, Pacquiao's opponents might also request strict drug testing in one iteration or the other. Past opponents, like Miguel Cotto, will voice their suspicions, some writers will condemn him, books will be written about it and while he will still have his fans, he'll also have a legion of doubters. One thing is without question, should Pacquiao be tormented for the rest of his career due to his self-produced SNAFU of the biggest fight of all time, he deserves every bit of it.
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POTSHOTS
If ESPN were to make a "30 for 30" documentary of this whole fiasco, I'd title it "Blood Feud" with a tagline of "What if I told you that the one thing that's not worth fighting for is your character?"
Talks have disintegrated for the proposed Danny Green-Bernard Hopkins match due to, what else when it comes to Hopkins, money. Both fighters started off agreeing to a 50-50 split, but according to Gary Shaw, who is advising Green, Hopkins stood firm on 60-40 and Green bailed out. All that's left for Hopkins is Paul Williams, Lucian Bute or Chad Dawson. All fighters possess the style to beat him easily.
Allan Green and Sakio Bika are finally going to face off in February in what should be an action-packed war. Both fighters were supposed to save the undercard of Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez, but Green took another fight. If Green has bite in his bark, he's going to have a hell of a fight on his hands.
Do you know why Shane Mosley is not a pay-per-view fighter? You can blame poor promotion on the part of Golden Boy, who has all but ignored his welterweight unification match against Andre Berto next month.