We couldn’t even make it through one whole week of 2012 without the back-and-forth regarding the never-ending story of the greatest fight to never happen. Not one week. Floyd Mayweather is not going to prison and will be announcing his opponent for his May fight sooner than later, Manny Pacquiao will likely be finalizing a fourth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez under the smokescreen that three other fighters are being considered, and once again, as it has been in many instances for the past two and a half years, Bob Arum has found another way to weasel out of making this fight happen. Unlike in previous years though, now everybody is seemingly on to his game.
When Mayweather was originally sentenced, Arum went on the record trying to push Pacquiao to take a date in May, and while he never outright said May 5th, it was widely assumed that he’d try to put Pacquiao in Vegas on the traditionally biggest day of the sport. Then last Friday happened, and now Arum is again trying to do damage control by backtracking as much as he can, but this time, with only a few days of padding between the statements he’s made regarding Pacquiao’s availability in May, there is very little he can do at all.
Now everybody, from Dan Rafael to Chris Mannix, all of the usual pom-pom wavers are now turning against Arum, and even the general public are finally hearing what we here at FightHype have been trying to tell you all along…Arum is the obstacle preventing Mayweather vs. Pacquiao from happening. There are no more excuses, no more blaming Mayweather for purse demands or additional testing, whatever…it’s all out in the open now.
