Pacquiao Mayweather Fight Dead? Don't Believe It.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum has declared the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather fight to be officially dead. This stems from a disagreement over what type of drug test to use to ensure both fighters are not doping before the fight. Don't believe what you read this fight is going to happen, and any one that says otherwise isn't looking at the big picture.

First of all with each fighter guaranteed to get $25 million each at the minimum, and the promoters and everyone else involved with making the fight happen standing to make substantial paydays as well they won't just let this fight not happen on a technicality. Arum claims to be moving forward with plans to have Pacquiao fight Paul Malignaggi on March 13th instead of Mayweather, I think this is purely posturing on Arum's part. Mayweather's camp is insisting upon using Olympic style drug testing by the USADA. Arum has claimed that Pacquiao is "scared" of needles, and that he believes having blood drawnus too close to the fight weakens a fighter. I don't think Manny really cares either way, and I believe the objections are coming from Freddie Roach (Manny's trainer). I don't beleive Manny is doping, and I think he always wants to prove himself against the best and he lets the people in his camp handle all of the out of the ring details. If you notice all of the comments on this have come from Bob Arum and Freddie Roach, Manny hasn't said anything with regards to this, so we will never know if these are really things coming from him.

In Mayweather's case for once he has the high road in an argument and has agreed to the Olympic style testing, now his motives for this clearly are not because its his responsibility to make sure both fighters are clean. This is Floyd's way of getting back at the Pacquiao camp for insisting on the weight restrictions in the fight contract. In Mayweather's last fight he had to pay Marquez $600000 in penalties because Floyd was overweight by two pounds, Marquez agreed to the fight anyway and subsequently lost. In negotiations for this fight the Pacquiao camp insisted on a 147 max weight limit which means that at not time even after the weigh in Mayweather can't weigh more than 147 pounds. Any weight over the contracted amount would have cost each fighter $10 million dollars per pound which is almost unheard of in a fight contract. The Mayweather camp agreed to these terms, and they picked an issue to jab at the Pacquiao camp with which was the USADA drug testing.

Unfortunately these tactics and gamesmanship have put the fight on ice for now, the fight will happen eventually if the March 13th date comes and goes without the sides coming to an agreement. There is too much at stake for it not to happen with the Staples center offering $20 million and Jerry Jones of the Cowboys offering $25 million to host the fight. This is one of the things that plagues boxing, and fuels all the critics who clamor for people to turn to MMA as an alternative. Generally in MMA all the fighters are under contract with an organization and for the most part have to honor the agreements, you have disputes but most of time when there is a mega-fight in MMA scheduled it happens. I suspect that all of this is merely a way for them to hype the fight even more, which is a clever move by both sides. Think about it all these venues will up their offers to host the fight, and the public is going to be even more thirsty to see it with all of this controversy surrounding the fight.

This is all part of the grand plan and they are working it to perfection, for those that believe Floyd is being a coward and doesn't really want the fight you aren't thinking clearly. If you will remember they call him Floyd "money" Mayweather and that's what this fight is about money. He owes the IRS back taxes, and this fight would more than cover what he owes them and give him enough to retire on if he wanted to. Floyd isn't scared to lose he is much too cocky to fathom losing a fight, and he is much too greedy to leave that much money on the table. Pacquiao would cement his legacy as the best pound for pound fighter, and maybe the best boxer ever if he beats Mayweather. This is even magnified by the fact that Pacquiao came out on Dec. 25th and said that he plans on suing Floyd Mayweather, and the people in his camp for defamation of character. He says people now come up to him and ask him has he ever taken steroids, Pacquiao was taken back by all of this and feels the need to defend his reputation. This was Pacquiao's exact statement, "I have instructed my promoter, Bob Arum, head of Top Rank Inc., to help me out in the filing of the case as soon as possible because I have had people coming over to me now asking if I really take performance-enhancing drugs and I have cheated my way into becoming the No. 1 boxer in the world,". This lawsuit is posturing by Pacquiao and an attempt to put pressure back on Mayweather to bypass the Olympic style blood testing. As I stated earlier in this article Pacquiao only wants to prove himself and wants to get past all the semantics, in this statement ""Now, I say to Floyd Mayweather Jr., don't be a coward, and face me in the ring, mano-a-mano, and shut your big, pretty mouth, so we can show the world who is the true king of the ring." it shows he wants to prove just fight and prove himself.

The money is nice too and stakes too big, we all know Manny wants this fight to happen as well and from his statements he wants the fight. Based on those facts the fight will happen next year sometime, I still believe March 13th will be the date and at the last minute they will find some sort of resolution to keep the fight date intact. The lawsuit is all posturing Pacquiao has no foot to stand on in a defamation case and he knows it, it's just another way these types of things are worked out in boxing.

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