Arum Talks Pacquiao-Mayweather Negotiations

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    downloadDuring a stop on the press tour in New York last week for the Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri fight, the topic of a possible future fight between Pacquiao and pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather came up. To anyone who has followed Pacquiao or Mayweather over the years, this is nothing new. Both men have been accused in the past of using the other man’s name to promote the current fight that they are involved in. When Pacquiao was asked about the potential fight, he confirmed that negotiations have been going on between the two camps. Mayweather recently contradicted those claims and denied any knowledge whatsoever of the two camps speaking.

    Owner of thaboxingvoice.com Nestor Gibbs got a chance to catch up with Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum to follow up on Pacquiao’s statement. “All I’ve said and all I know is that I was consulted and as a result of talking both to CBS and HBO, I put them together and they arrived at a method to do the fight, and I subsequently had conversations with both of them. I haven’t talked to Haymon, and I haven’t talked to Mayweather. As far as I’m concerned we have a way to do this fight with the two networks working together and it’s up to the fighters to work out a deal,” Arum stated.” He went on to explain, “My guy Pacquiao is willing to sit down and work out the deal. I am not convinced that Mayweather is and based on what Mayweather is saying, I don’t think he wants to do the fight. That’s where it stands.”

    Arum also responded to Mayweather’s statement claiming that he has no knowledge of any negotiations. “If everybody is talking from the truth, Mayweather says, ‘Hey there’s no negotiations,’ which means that he hasn’t negotiated, which is true because I can’t say that he has. Pacquiao says that there are negotiations because there are between the two networks, so Pacquiao is telling the truth, and I talked to Pacquiao about terms that he’s willing to accept for a Mayweather fight, but it’s all talk now. There is no deal.”

    When pressed further by Gibbs about the details of the negotiations that have gone on so far Arum emphatically stated, “I’ve said what I had to say which is probably too much, but I’m not saying anybody is a liar or anyone has made unreasonable demands. I’ve given you a capsule of where everything stands.”

    It was mentioned to Arum that even though the two fighter’s camps aren’t talking at least it’s a step in the right direction that the two rival networks are, and he agreed vehemently. “You’re damn right it’s a step in the right direction because if the networks weren’t agreeable to doing something like that, the fight couldn’t happen. Mayweather has a contract with Showtime and through Top Rank Pacquiao has a contract with HBO. That was a legal impediment to having the fight happen but that impediment because of the way the networks handled it is no longer an impediment. I think that is very, very significant.”