Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are inching closer to finalizing a deal for a fight, but fans should remain cautiously optimistic as reports indicate the agreement is still being held up.
Dan Rafael of ESPN.com reported Monday that a deal for a fight — which many thought could be announced during the Super Bowl — has not been reached and the sides are facing a “make-or-break” situation over the next few days.
Mayweather and Pacquiao crossed paths during halftime of a recent Miami Heat game (you can see the exchange here) and later met privately in a hotel room to discuss the fight. The two fighters have supposedly agreed on purse money and drug testing and are working with Showtime (Mayweather’s network) and HBO (Pacquiao’s network) for a joint pay-per-view event.
Still, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum claims Mayweather’s camp is holding things up.
“There are issues that should be solved in 10 minutes, but it’s a slow dance,” Arum said. “We send one draft to their side and their lawyer sends back a draft with something else that’s an issue. And there doesn’t seem to be any urgency about it on their side. It’s terrible.”
Arum is still stating publicly that he wonders if Mayweather truly wants the fight, so you can see that the verbal sparring match remains in full swing.
“There are unresolved issues on both the fighter deal and the network deal,” a source reportedly told Rafael. “(The fighters are) on the same page regarding basic deal points but there are lot of meaningful items still unresolved.”
In 2002, Showtime and HBO carried a joint pay-per-view of the Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis bout. The networks agreed at the time that replay rights for the fight would be given to the network whose fighter won, and HBO reportedly wants simultaneous replay rights regardless of the outcome for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. That could be one thing holding the deal up.
With both fighters and their promoters still calling out their opponent in public, it’s clear that there are still obstacles to overcome. If a deal cannot be reached this time around, the fight is unlikely to ever take place.
