Next time those pugilistic poker players repping Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao sit down at the table, they should have a fairly easy time of wrapping up a big fight deal, right?
Au contraire, you are so wrong, balut breath!
In a saner world, you could logically deduce that making the mega match would be easier with only one pesky issue, the unbending Mayweather demand for totally random blood testing, to be battled back and forth.
But this is Bizarro World, this is boxing and, while I hate to be the nattering nabob of negativity, I think the second round of negotiations will be more difficult.
Let’s start with this premise, that the 50-50 revenue split has gone out the window because I think it has. All bets from Round One are scratched.
Think of Pacman’s March 13 bout with I’m Not Joshing Clottey and Money’s May 1 Sugar Free Mosley fight as being like primary elections.
You don’t think both sides will marshall the live gate and PPV numbers to make arguments as why their man should not get the lion’s share of the biggest boxing jackpot ever?
Of course they will, the Golden Guys and the Top Rankers because that is their job, to be advocates for their boxer.
So anyone who thinks that some reasonable acceptance of terms on random blood testing is the magical key that opens the door to signed bout contracts and the Manny-Money Lollapalooza is guilty of what my man Zig Ziglar would label “stinking thinking.”
I’m not trying to put any bad mojo on making the Big One, I’m really not.
But I think they will have to begin at the beginning.
And, unless the Nevada commission moves to adopt an Olympic style random drug test system, they may never get back to that issue.
I reserve the right to be wrong and I hope I am but I don’t think so.
What was agreed to previously is scattered now like ashes in the wind.
