Mayweather-Pacquiao: All According To Plan

Late last November, I was asked what I thought of the highly anticipated Floyd Mayweather—Manny Pacquiao fight, likely scheduled for March of 2010.

“Shocked!” I responded.

When asked why I was shocked, I explained that never does the biggest fight in the sport come to terms so easily and quickly (especially one including Mayweather and Pacquiao).

There was something so curious about it. 

Neither fighter had a reputation for being easy in negotiations, so why did this huge event come together with no issues?

Well, as everyone knows now, it didn’t come together.

The fight fell apart when the two parties couldn’t agree on how to execute the testing for performance enhancers.

The question I have is: Did they ever intend to fight each other in March?

The way they’ve gone about it certainly has kept both fighters names in the headlines consistently since their last fights.  Not a day goes by without a new story about the failed negotiations (like this one).

They have managed to divide all boxing fans on who they think is to blame for the fight falling apart. Boxing message boards are filled with debates between Mayweather fans and Pacquiao fans.

They have secured multi-million dollar paydays in the meantime, ones in which both fighters are favored to win and neither fighter is accused of ducking the other. This way they can both keep making statements to the media about how much they want to fight the other, without having to take the full blame for not.

It also makes sense from the aspect of guaranteed money earned.

If they fought in March, one person would have to lose, thus lessening that fighter’s next purse exponentially. This way they are both assured a few extra million dollars before the massive event likely later in the year.

It would seem that this was all done with intention. You can certainly choose to be bothered by it all, or you can choose to appreciate that they picked very entertaining fights on the interim. And we still will have the biggest fight in the sport to look forward to for the rest of the year.

That is, if everything goes according to plan.