The Manny Pacquiao side’s deadline came and went with little thaw in the talks for a Floyd Mayweather fight, and precisely the feared television impasse, and if the two sides walk away blaming each other in a few days, remember it was Pacquiao’s television network that wasn’t motivated to make the fight.
It would be the Mayweather side that walks, through necessity of timing, but the Pacquiao side that forced it.
It is incumbent on both sides to stay at the table, but the fact that Time Warner/HBO has little reason to push for Mayweather-Pacquiao this year remains, even while CBS/Showtime has every reason to deliver it, and until the former gets shoved into the negotiating inferno by Pacquiao and/or his promoter Bob Arum, the fight won’t get made. And inevitably, because Mayweather plans to fight May 2 regardless who it is, and Pacquiao’s backup plan if he doesn’t fight Mayweather on May 2 is an alternate date of May 30, guess who has to walk away from the table first?
That’s right. Pacquiao and Arum, and by extension Time Warner/HBO, only have to stall these talks a little while longer, can say they stayed at the table beyond their end-of-January deadline, and can force the opposite side to walk away first because Mayweather has the earlier date to fulfill.
Lest we fail to mention, Arum is a nearly peerless promoter.
Mayweather-Pacquiao for May 2 has a shelf life of about two weeks before the proposal really does wash out completely, and nothing came as a surprise about the events since last week, when we noted here that Time Warner/HBO doesn’t have the same motivation to make the fight as CBS/Showtime, whose Mayweather contract expires this year.
The lack of surprising developments included several things: Mayweather discovering that Pacquiao would be at a Miami Heat game one night last week and showing up to confront him; the body language between them; the hotel meeting afterward where you can bet Mayweather enlightened Pacquiao as to precisely where he believes the negotiations’ snags are; and the Dewey Defeats Truman moment TMZ suffered in declaring the fight a done deal, which was ridiculous on a number of levels.
And it certainly was not a surprise when Yahoo! reported that Time Warner/HBO and CBS/Showtime had reached an impasse over delayed-telecast rights, which on a fight of that magnitude could be pure gold to the subscription base of the prevailing network.
If a deal can’t be reached, Floyd Mayweather may have to move on for Manny Pacquiao in time for a May 2 fight.
There isn’t a person who cares about boxing who doesn’t want Mayweather-Pacquiao now. The major deal points are done. They know where the fight would be, glove weights and brands, weight limit, ring dimensions, who gets introduced first, even how the signing of initial contracts would be announced.
One major sticking point remains: That Time Warner/HBO, for now, still seems to want to make the fight that is best for boxing, but in 2016, when Mayweather could be a television free agent and the two subscription networks might not have to work together on the fight.
The real motivations of the networks, and the major boxing entities whose events they televise, have come to conflict in this negotiation.
If you stay at the table, and do so with pure motivation, maybe you get the fight done.
If not, everyone can point fingers again in a couple weeks when Mayweather has to get another opponent for a fight three months from today.
What we know this week is precisely what we knew last week, that the two networks are not equally motivated, that CBS/Showtime is working earnestly at Mayweather’s behest and in its own contractual interest to find an agreement, and that plenty of people have come to question whether Time Warner/HBO is doing the same.
The subscription networks don’t typically knuckle under to that kind of public pressure in these negotiations, but the fact remains that Time Warner/HBO has responsibilities to both shareholders and the Pacquiao camp to satisfy, and making Mayweather-Pacquiao in 2016, solely under its television banner, would be its ideal.
But also on that list of clients and clientele to satisfy is Pacquiao, and by extension his promoter Arum, and who’s to say Time Warner/HBO isn’t, in fact, satisfying both with its reluctance?
Time Warner/HBO won’t make the fight without real internal pressure from Pacquiao/Arum first. There is little way to know how strong that pressure is.
What has become clear that Time Warner/HBO, in balking at the negotiating table, is acting on behalf of everyone on its side of the table, including Pacquiao.
Whether it’s money, or weight, or drug testing, or promotional impasse, or competing television contracts, there often is a way to say no to a fight you don’t want without saying the word.
