Blame Game Irrelevant: Mayweather/Pacquiao Fallout Proves Point

We've heard all the excuses—from all sides and from all parties of both camps. Bob Arum, Richard Schaefer, Leonard Ellerbe, Freddie Roach, the list goes on.

Many of us have stuck by our fighter in regards to choosing sides, while others have swayed back and forth each day as new stories hit the internet placing blame on whose fault it is this time around.

For over a month now, boxing fans have been on an emotional rollercoaster with the events leading up to this mega-fight—which was to take place on March 13 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Now, as Bob Arum put it for the 11th time in the last two weeks, "the fight is off." Does he REALLY mean it this time? Who knows. Frankly, I don't care what Mr. Arum says anymore, because if any of you are like myself, you take what he says with a grain of salt these days.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao have both recently released statements shifting blame on one another as to why this fight is not going to happen.

This blame game has also been going on for far too long, as many boxing fans are sick and tired of the excuses and run-around in the saga. This has led many to call for the boycotting of Mayweather and Pacquiao future bouts, or even some have gone as far to give up on the sport of boxing altogether.

At the end of the day, there are no winners here. Fighters, promoters, and even boxing itself lose miserably with this outcome.

As many boxing writers across the world have noted, there is way too much money for the fighters—and way too much excitement and relevancy for the boxing community to become mainstream once again—to let this fight go down the tubes. But somehow, it has happened.

You can put the blame wherever you feel it's warranted, but does it really matter whose fault it is?

Mayweather fans will say one thing, while Pacquiao fans will say another. Pacquiao has agreed to a 24-day testing window before the fight. Mayweather has now agreed to a 14-day window, which he had previously insisted on being 48-hours before the fight.

You may be wondering why essentially 10 days is holding up the biggest fight in the last 25 years. I have been pondering this and can come to no conclusion except for the fact that there are two major issues at hand here, and it has nothing to do with now the infamous phrase "olympic-style random drug testing".

It's all about control and power.

Manny Pacquiao does not want to be controlled and told what to do and how/when to do it by Floyd Mayweather Jr. That's essentially what Mayweather is trying to accomplish by demanding these tests, right?

On the other side of the spectrum, you have Pacquiao's camp who are seemingly less-willing to do what many may feel is rightly justified to clear his name once and for all with the steroid accusations. 

These "accusations", because that's all they are at this point, may now linger for the rest of his career because of his hard-nosed stance on this issue.

I don't need to get into the specifics of the drug-testing issue. We have all formed our own opinion, and if you haven't yet, there are plenty of articles out there that can help educate you as to what the blood and/or urine testing will or will not accomplish.

Boxing needed this fight. With all of the negative labels thrown on boxing recently because of the insane amount of title commissions, politics, and money control.

By not making this fight happen, an exclamatory point has been proven. They're all right. Those "negative labels" are not just that, they are what boxing has become—a self-dug hole. Boxing seemed to be slowly, but surely, digging itself out of this hole, but just hit rock bottom again.

There may be irreparable damage done to boxing, as a whole, by this fight not happening. Even if it does happen later on down the road sometime, how many boxing fans will be willing to forget the bad taste that was left from this drawn out, unsatisfying failure of negotiations.

Instead of doing it for the good of the sport (and to line their own pockets, I might add), they let their egos get in the way.

In a perfect world, you would think any sport would jump at the chance at matching the two very best in the world against one another. Unfortunately for boxing, that could not be done.

Sadly, the parties involved in NOT making this fight happen proved a painful point to all of us. At the end of the day, your self-indulgent lust for control and power is killing the very thing that puts food on your table every day. Boxing fans from around the world can only hope you will see this one day before it's too late.