Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Floyd Foolish to Refuse 50-50 Split with Pac-Man

Whoopdee-freakin'-doo. Another predictable turn in the ongoing Cold War between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

File this one under "Hypocritical Exchanges Between Pots and Kettles."

According to The Associated Press, Money May took to the bully pulpit at a news conference promoting his May 5th fight with Miguel Cotto, telling the attendant press at the Apollo Theater that Pac-Man isn't "one of the sharpest knives in the drawer" and:

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"He faces Floyd Mayweather, he's not getting 50-50. Not at all. No one is getting 50-50."

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Is that so, Floyd? So, you're telling us that Pacquiao is stupid and suggesting that he should take less than half of the purse from a potential mega-fight, even though he's the bigger, more profitable boxer?

An amusing bit of commentary to say the least, given that Mayweather is the one who'll be behind bars starting June 1st on account of a domestic violence case.

Not that anyone should be surprised to hear Mayweather taking potshots at Pacquiao from afar. He called out Pac-Man in 2009, insinuating that his refusal to agree to Olympic-style drug testing may have stemmed from the use of performance-enhancing drugs and attempted to coax Pacquiao's camp into a fight in May while laying down his own unilateral terms. Pacquiao will instead fight Timothy Bradley at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on June 9th.

Surprisingly enough, not everything that came out of Mayweather's mouth was complete nonsense. Take this interesting nugget for instance, per ESPN's Michael Woods:

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"The only way I think a fight the guy with three losses and I don't know how many draws, the only way that fight happens is for he has to leave Bob Arum. And I'm not telling him to leave, because I know how the media is, they take your words and screw them up. They make it the way they want to make it."

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Mayweather might just be on to something with his criticisms of Arum. His own representatives at Golden Boy have had a heck of a time trying to hammer out any sort of deal with Arum's folks at Top Rank every time they've so much as attempted to seat themselves at the same negotiating table. Perhaps it would be easier to strike a deal between these two if Arum weren't involved.

Then again, it's entirely possible given the shadowy nature of this particular detente that Arum and company are the only ones keeping Pacquiao from getting shaken down by Mayweather's camp on the way to an uneven split of the money. 

If anything, Money May's latest goading is nothing more than yet another attempt to stoke the flame between these two, to get the ball rolling ever so slowly toward the bout that everybody wants to see.

Either that, or Mayweather was actually yelling at himself in the mirror to psyche himself up for Cotto.

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