The day we’ve all been waiting for is here.
Tonight, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao will finally face off in a fight that the the world has been clamoring for. So what finally made the pair sign on the dotted line?
Well, if you ask Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, it was the public pressure Mayweather was facing after Pac’s Foot Locker commercial.
You know, the one where Pacquiao mistakenly believes that Mayweather had finally agreed to the fight; and responds by jumping up and down, yelling “He said YES!”, in the ring?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS8WJ6Lz1AU
That one. It was hilarious and self-depracating on Manny’s part, obviously, but even more importantly it painted Mayweather as the man who was afraid to fight.
“I told Manny, every time you’re on TV, you should do that bit (from the commercial) over and over. Because it’s the first time he put pressure on Mayweather,” Roach said in an interview with Sporting News. “And it was a lot better answer than, ‘Ask my promoter.’”
The ad began running in November of 2014 and, shortly thereafter, their highly publicized “unplanned” meeting occurred during a Miami Heat game in January.
The pair exchanged phone numbers, and then secretly met in Pacquiao’s suite later that night to begin serious discussions. About a month later, they announced the fight and here we are.
Thanks to Foot Locker for showcasing Pac’s humor to the world, this fight is really going down tonight. Finally.
