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Pacquiao-Mayweather would be historic fight

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Mark Kriegel

Mark Kriegel is the national columnist for FOXSports.com. He is the author of two New York Times best sellers, Namath: A Biography and Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, which Sports Illustrated called "the best sports biography of the year."

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Updated Nov 18, 2009 12:55 PM ET
     
 
The list of parties who've contacted promoter Bob Arum in hopes of hosting a mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather include the Yankees and the Mets, the Jets and the Giants, the Cowboys, a consortium of Nevada businessmen, and a former Presidential advisor. First off, you can forget about Yankee Stadium or Citi Field, where municipal, state and other assorted taxes would result in a 15 percent levy against the combatants' purses. "There's no conceivable way the fight can take place in New York City because of the tax structure," Arum said Monday afternoon. New Jersey, where the Jets and Giants play, isn't much better, unless your lobbyist is a Soprano. More promising is an idea advanced by Bill Clinton's former consigliere, James Carville. Under that scenario, Pacquiao and Mayweather would meet in New Orleans' Superdome. "Louisiana has a much smaller tax," said Arum, "and Carville is talking to the governor about getting a waiver." Then there's Texas, with no state income tax, and a stadium that holds up to 111,000 for football. And don't forget Las Vegas, where Arum says he has a group willing to build a makeshift outdoor stadium to seat 30,000. Not bad for a dead sport, huh? Actually, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that boxing isn't dead. Rather more astonishing is the identity of its latest, greatest savior: an undersized Filipino who barely speaks English. It's long been said that promotions featuring Manny Pacquiao suffer from the language barrier. Even worse, he's afflicted with a terrible case of good manners. He's polite and respectful and entirely unwilling to disrespect or diminish his opponents. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Manny Pacquiao is the absolute worst interview in all of sports. By the same token, I don't know anyone — with the recent exception of Mayweather — who doesn't like and admire the guy. There's an ingenuous quality about him. And it's particularly refreshing to jaded American sports fans. Look around. You've got an inexhaustible supply of tatted twitterers, legions of smarmy college coaches, and a generation of chemically enhanced cheaters. Everyone's got an angle. Even the guys who were supposed to be pure turn out to be calculated hustlers, looking for that edge. Take Brett Favre, for example. Sure, he'll play for love of the game, but only if he can run his favorite offense and hand off to Adrian Peterson. Pacquiao, by contrast, just fights. The world has never seen a happier, more contented pugilist. What's more, he's made history. A fighter who began at 106 pounds suddenly finds himself the welterweight champ. He is undefeated at 140 pounds or above, having ended Oscar De Hoya's career in nine rounds, demolished Ricky Hatton in two, and now, overwhelming Miguel Cotto, another formidable welterweight champion Mayweather managed not to fight. At those weights, said Arum, "Manny is taking real risk every time he performs." Then again, those merrily accepted risks are very much appreciated. Despite the recession, and a pricing scheme that asks $64.95 to see a fight in HD, Arum expects pay-per-view numbers for Pacquiao-Cotto to fall between one million and 1.5 million buys. "Closer to a million-five," he said. "And that's with two non-Americans. Manny has drifted into everyone's consciousness." Certainly, he's gotten into Floyd's head. Late Monday afternoon Mayweather released a seven-paragraph quote, castigating Pacquiao for not calling him out by name. Of course he didn't. Pacquiao never calls out anyone, never has. Besides, the last guy to call out Mayweather was Shane Mosley, a breach of etiquette that resulted in Mayweather saying he'd never fight the guy. Mayweather usually feigns an unconcerned posture with regard to prospective opponents. That's not the case here. In fact, Floyd might be the only one in the Western Hemisphere who's parsing Pacquiao's sentences with such care. Check it out: "He said during an interview he did leading up to his fight that he didn't think I wanted to fight him and that boxing for me was just a business and I wasn't interested in a good fight. But again, he never said during that interview that he would fight me. Why is he talking about what I don't do instead of what he wants to do? Plain and simple, it's because he knows he can't beat me under any circumstances." For the record, Pacquiao's "loudmouth trainer," Freddie Roach, acknowledges Mayweather's considerable assets, beginning with his reach, his superior aptitude as a counter-puncher, and his ability to fight going backwards. That said, he's not going to like how it feels, going against Pacquiao. "Most guys don't have the speed to punch with Mayweather. We do," said Roach, who sees his guy winning by KO. "I don't believe Floyd has ever been hit as hard as Manny would hit him."
So there you go: the happy risk-taker against Mayweather's villainous "Money" persona, a fighter who always seeks to minimize his exposure. It's a good promotion. But it's a historic fight. The pot is already too rich for it not to happen. "I want a letter from Mayweather to HBO as to who is authorized to negotiate on his behalf," said Arum. It's supposed to be Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer. But the guy who concerns Arum is Mayweather's advisor, Al Haymon. "I have no beef at all with Richard," said Arum. "I do have a beef with Haymon." Then again, as Arum well knows, bad feelings are easily put aside in deference to a higher cause: money. "If it's a question of getting a deal done for my fighter, I would gladly negotiate with that shmuck from Iran, Ahmadinejad," he said. Now that's a thought. I wonder what kind of tax credits you can get in Tehran.

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