Manny Pacquiao wasted no time bringing up Floyd Mayweather after last night’s demolishing of Chris Algieri. Pacquaio immediately asked for the “Fight of the Century,” but is it time for these claims to fall on deaf ears?
As the great Jay Z says, “We Don’t believe you, you need more people.” As fans of boxing we’ve all heard this narrative one to many times. The constant back and forth between two of boxing’s elite athletes which results in nothing. Here’s the latest example:
“I’m stronger and faster now. I’m so happy with my performance. Yes, I’m ready to face Mayweather. I was never discouraged after that loss to Marquez,” he said, “I just learned that I needed more determination and focus, and I learned that from that fight.”
Pacquiao has been more vocal of his desire to face Mayweather after the bout, and when asked if he thinks his rival is afraid of him he simply replied with “Yeah, it’s kinda like that.”
In fact, you would barely know that Pacquiao was preparing for a fight against an undefeated champion not named Mayweather. Chris Algieri entered the fight at 20-0 and flaunting a huge win over Ruslan Provodnikov; that didn’t seem to be of any concern to Manny.
During fight week all talk was about Manny fighting Mayweather and Mayweather being a coward for not accepting the match. Manny went as far as releasing this Footlocker ad which features him taking a shot at Mayweather:
It turns out that Manny didn’t need to spend too much time worrying about Algeiri because he was dominant from the opening bell. His constant pressure and footwork made Algieri look like an amateur fighter that was just happy to collect a check. Algieri’s career punches per round average is 88, against Manny it dropped to a mere 33. The only negative for Pacquiao is that he wasn’t able to stop Algieri, despite knocking him down 6 times during the fight.
It’d be considered an impressive victory for any other boxer, but Manny Pacquiao is held to a higher standard and at this point anything he does is null-and-void if it isn’t against Floyd Mayweather. It’d be easy to blame fans or the media for that unfair perception but it’s really Manny and Floyd’s fault. They’ve finally teased and prodded the public into demanding a fight, when in all honesty neither ever expected that fight to happen.
All of the blame can’t be shouldered by Pacquiao and Mayweather, because they are both heavily influenced by two super-promoters/advisors in Bob Arum and Al Haymon. Haymon and Arum do a poor job of hiding their disdain for one another and their personal vendetta is the primary reason we will never see Pacquiao vs Mayweather.
They are arguably the two most powerful men in boxing and with their stamp of approval any boxing match can be set up. All it would take are for these two to sit in a room, shake hands on a fight, and hand off the details to their lawyers… If it could only be that easy.
The two seem to prioritize the other’s downfall over making must-see boxing matches. Arum sees Pacquiao’s career coming to an end, so it’s not surprising to see him open up about the possibility of a fight, but Haymon just signed a mega-deal with NBC Sports and is in no rush to put any money in Arum’s pockets.
Mayweather may have the only REAL answer to creating a fight between him and Pacquiao, eliminating the advisors completely and hosting the fight as a Mayweather Promotions PPV.
This would allow Mayweather and Pacquiao to independently pay Arum and Haymon from their agreed purses. Showtime and HBO would be cut front he equation but that’d only put more money into the pockets of the two fighters and to be honest Mayweather can’t give Manny any worse of a deal than he already has with Arum. The downfall of Floyd’s proposal is that Manny decided to sign with Arum through 2016, so Arum would have to okay a temporary release for Pacquiao which won’t happen.
Alas, we will never see these two in the ring, but we will certainly be fed the grand illusion of these two fighting in May, then September, and then again next year.
It’ll be the greatest fight never seen, and thats okay. No one wants to see Floyd vs Manny in 2016 when they are diminished fighters and a ghost of themselves. At this point we can hope that the two fight the best young fighters boxing has to offer instead of taking these easy fights for quick paydays.