(AP/INQUIRER) BAGUIO CITY—Floyd Mayweather Jr. may have found a $100-million reason to shelve a fight with Manny Pacquiao.
Top Rank chief Bob Arum revealed to journalists here yesterday that he and fellow Hall of Fame promoter Don King tried to put together the showdown that the boxing universe is dreaming about “after a group came in wanting to put [the fight] in a particular country.”
But Mayweather, who deflected two previous attempts by promoters to put the fight together using overly stringent dope testing procedures, found a new way to thwart negotiations: He priced himself out of the bargaining table.
Arum, who’ll be staying in the Philippines to monitor Pacquiao's training camp until Thursday, said Mayweather asked for a ludicrous guarantee worth $100 million for himself.
Blurting out an expletive, Arum said that the number “indicated that he (Mayweather) didn't want to fight.”
“Who's going to pay him 100 million? I mean, unless Manny fights for nothing.”
The consensus by boxing's prime movers is that both Pacquiao and Mayweather stand to earn between $40 and $50 million, including pay-per-view shares, if ever the super fight pushes through.
It would have happened as early as 2009, but Mayweather shielded himself with demands for an Olympic-style drug-testing protocols, which isn't the norm for professional fights.
In the second round of negotiations, Pacquiao relented a bit, agreeing to having a doping control body to draw blood for testing up to two weeks before the fight.
Inexplicably, Mayweather's camp again balked, insisting that no talks ever took place—a claim eventually proven to be false.
Now, Mayweather, who has dropped to No. 3 in credible pound-for-pound rankings behind Pacquiao and rising middleweight superstar and WBC champion Sergio Martinez, shielded himself from having to agree to a fight with his asking price.
Mayweather last fought in May 2010 when he beat Mosley by unanimous decision.
Neither Arum or Pacquiao delved too much in Mayweather’s latest demands, focusing instead on the eight-division champion’s welterweight showdown against Shane Mosley on May 7 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Even if their ring showdown doesn't push through, however, Pacquiao and Mayweather are likely to tangle in court.
According to an AP report Tuesday, United States District Judge Larry Hicks of Nevada has ruled that Pacquiao's defamation lawsuit against the Mayweathers (Floyd Jr. and Sr. and Roger), Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions' Richard Schaefer, rests on firm allegations and has sufficient evidence to continue.
In the lawsuit filed in 2009, Pacquiao averred that the respondents have besmirched his untarnished reputation (he hasn't failed any drug test) with constant allegations that he'd been using performance enhancing drugs.
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