Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao finally met face-to-face when they both coincidentally ended up at a Miami Heat game. Following the game, they met again at Pacquiao’s hotel room and it appeared the mega fight was closer to happening than ever before. Well it turns out after six years of on-again, off-again failed negotiations, their talks have hit another snag.
“The thing that really concerns me is that we are running out of time for May 2,” Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who represents Pacquiao, told ESPN.com on Monday. “If you want to drag this out a little longer then move the fight to later in May — May 30 is a good date — or go in June. We agreed to go on May 2 because that is the date Mayweather is hung up on, but if we’re going to go on May 2 we need to get this done.”
While many were led to believe that the fighter camps were on the same page following the hotel meeting, and that the deal hinged only on CBS/Showtime, which has Mayweather under contract, and Time Warner/HBO, Pacquiao’s exclusive network, finalizing a deal for a joint pay-per-view telecast, there are still open deal points between the fighters.
“There are issues that should be solved in 10 minutes, but it’s a slow dance,” Arum said. “We send one draft to their side and their lawyer sends back a draft with something else that’s an issue. And there doesn’t seem to be any urgency about it on their side. It’s terrible.”
Arum maintains that Mayweather’s side is dragging their feet on multiple issues that could be quickly agreed upon. Pacquiao has reportedly agreed to many of Mayweather’s demands including a financial split (60-40 in Mayweather’s favor), Mayweather’s preferred drug testing protocol (the one deal point that killed the initial negotiations in late 2009 and early 2010), the date, site, order of the ring walks and introductions and the name of the fight (Mayweather-Pacquiao). But there are still issues to work out. Mayweather has constantly said that Arum is a liar so we might be right back where we started.
