Mayweather-Pacquiao bout not dead
Mayweather-Pacquiao bout not dead
By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports
The highly anticipated fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao may not be dead just yet. Though Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, whose company has already reserved May 5 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas to host the bout, is concerned that Pacquiao’s team is not interested, Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum said he’s simply not ready to talk now.
Arum did not rule out conversations for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but said he is not prepared to talk to Schaefer about it at the moment because he has a full schedule. Arum is promoting a WBC middleweight title fight in Houston between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Peter Manfredo Jr. on Saturday, then has a media day for Miguel Cotto in Florida, the Thanksgiving holiday, and then the Cotto-Margarito pay-per-view in New York on Dec. 3.
Bob Arum says he's open to discussing Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao, but has other things on his plate.
“Our position is simple and that is that right now, we’re not ready to talk,” Arum said Tuesday. “I’m in Los Angeles now, but I’m flying to New York in a couple of hours. I have a big fight to promote on Dec. 3.”
“Manny is on his way back to the Philippines today. In a few weeks, whether it’s a [Juan Manuel] Marquez rematch, a Mayweather fight, a fight with Timothy Bradley, or whatever, we’ll sit down with the appropriate parties and talk. But we’re not ready to talk about it now.”
Schaefer said he would like Arum to meet with him in Los Angeles later this week with retired federal judge Daniel Weinstein, an arbiter who has mediated several disputes between the companies.
Schaefer said he believes Arum is not interested in making the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, and so he said he is ready to move on and find an opponent who is willing to fight Mayweather. There are indications that Mayweather’s team has reached out to middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, though that could not be confirmed.
“I left Bob a message two months ago and he never called me back,” Schaefer said. “I read comments from Bob in the Los Angeles Times this morning saying that Manny wants a rematch with Marquez. What am I going to do, sit around and wait to see what they do? Hell no. I am going to get the biggest fight done for Floyd that I can. We wanted to make the Pacquiao fight, but if Bob doesn’t want to do it, or Manny is saying that he wants to fight Marquez, what can we do?
“Floyd wants the fight. He gave his team the go-ahead to reach out to me to get it done and we are ready, willing and able to talk. But in order to reach a deal, the other side has to want to come to the table.”
Arum, who said on Saturday he planned to pursue a rematch with Marquez, said he’s open to whatever the best deal is and said he’d need to speak to Pacquiao.
“There’s no rush,” he said. “There is still a lot of time. Manny just had a fight and went through a very hard training camp. He’s going home now. We need to give him a little time, and we have a lot of things to do ourselves. I’m not ruling out anything. No decisions have been made. But we’re just not ready to talk. Schaefer can talk to me, and I’m happy to talk to him, but we’re not going to talk in a negotiating stance just yet because of everything going on.”
