Bad Left Hook

In response to Floyd Mayweather Jr offering a $40 million flat fee and no cut of the revenue streams to Manny Pacquiao for a fight, Bob Arum has offered Floyd a similar flat fee of $45 million to make the fight. The pissing contest just "got real," I guess, or at least real in the sense that anything about "Mayweather vs Pacquiao" is real.

In short, none of this means anything.

Manila Standard has a bit more from Arum about Pacquiao's payoffs, and why he's listed as a $6 million purse on Nevada's official pay sheets, while his guarantees for last year's two fights were said to be $20M and $22M:

He said that under the rules of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the fighters need to be paid on the night of a fight.

To meet this requirement, Arum paid the NSAC $6 million for Pacquiao in his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez, which the commission paid to the Filipino after the fight and which could be cashed the next day.

Arum indicated this was in order to comply with the requirements, even as he pointed out that "in the long form contract," a copy of which is given the Internal Revenue Service, Pacquiao’s guarantee for the Marquez fight was $22 million, which was paid in full within 10 days, even though the contract stipulated it could be paid within two months.

I don't much care about this angle, since I always was pretty sure Manny was getting the reported guarantees, and wasn't buying any of the "conspiracy theories" or whatever about the payoffs, but there you are. That's Arum's explanation.

Anyway, this all just goes on and on and on, but the two aren't going to fight in May, and there are already indications that they won't fight in November either. With Miguel Cotto seemingly leaning toward taking a fight with Mayweather on May 5 instead of rematching Pacquiao on June 9, Pacquiao may be pushed into Bob Arum's "tournament" idea that would see the Filipino face Timothy Bradley on June 9, and Juan Manuel Marquez matched with Lamont Peterson.

But Marquez won't fight Peterson without a guarantee that a win nets him the fight with Pacquiao, which is still his ultimate goal, even though he's very willing to fight Peterson to get there.

To get all that done, Arum may have to basically book Pacquiao (should he beat Bradley) against Marquez (or Peterson, who may want the same guarantee to fight Marquez) for November, which would push the "Mayweather fight" back to 2013.

Oh the fun we have!

I just wish someone would announce a fight already. Enough. Let's move on. Stop telling us about what we know isn't happening and tell us what it is.