Manny Pacquiao Continues to Lose Media Battle with Floyd Mayweather

Will they or won't they? That's the most common question when it comes to Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

Boxing Scene reports that Pac-Man wavered about the topic at a recent dinner held in his honor. That gives "Pretty Boy" a bigger advantage in the ongoing media war between the two camps.

Since there's so much time for verbal jabs between bouts, perception is often more important than reality in boxing. It's a phenomenon that illustrated itself in recent comments in the report by both fighters as they dance around a possible May 5 megafight:

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Pacquiao said, "Hopefully, the next fight, is Mayweather. However," he quickly added, "I am not saying it will push through" leaving some doubt as to whether negotiations would succeed.

However, the undefeated Mayweather who had earlier scored a lopsided shutout win over Marquez said, "I can't be sitting waiting all day, you want to fight let's make it happen. I'm here, I'm waiting, what's going on? I can sign today. If I sign today you better sign tomorrow."

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If there was a scorecard based on media hype, Mayweather won that round big. What's going on behind the scenes could be completely different, but fans can only base their judgments on what they know and right now it looks like Money is ready and Pac-Man isn't convinced he is.

That doesn't mean a fight won't happen; it just signals that there's a lot of work left to do.

This most recent exchange also shows how quickly the script can get flipped. Prior to each man's most recent fights, it seemed like Pacquiao had the media edge. Prevailing wisdom said Mayweather was ducking him with Olympic blood-testing threats, among other things.

But then Pretty Boy scored a quick, albeit controversial, knockout win over Victor Ortiz. Pac-Man followed it with a mere majority decision win against Juan Manuel Marquez, who he's yet to beat convincingly in three tries. Mayweather beat "Dinamita" by unanimous decision in 2009.

And suddenly the tables had turned with Mayweather's camp on the offensive.

Sadly, caught in the middle are diehard boxing fans, who just want to see a fight that could rejuvenate the sport. It's hard to even fathom the amount of hype a superfight would generate if the two sides could stop bickering and work tirelessly toward an agreement.

Ample money is available, a date is set, a venue is picked and the sports world is ready. There's really no reason an agreement shouldn't be reached, especially since both boxers could really use the fight to complete their career résumé.

But since progress—if there is any to speak of—is painfully slow, Mayweather can sleep easy at night knowing he's flexed his media muscles better than Pacquiao.

At least for now.