SO MANNY Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. are going to fight on March 13, after all.
Too bad it won’t be against each other.
Pacquiao will fight Joshua Clottey, while Mayweather Jr., who’s been christened with a lot of creative names in the Philboxing.com forum, is fighting a yet to be announced foe (TBAF).
Pacquiao vs. Clottey will be in Dallas, while Mayweather vs. TBAF is in Las Vegas.
(And oh, before I forget, there’s also Pacquiao vs. the Mayweathers and Golden Boy Promotions in the courtroom.)
Though Clottey lost to the guy Pacquiao beat, he won’t be any pushover.
Remember Erik Morales vs. Pacquiao 1?
Morales just lost to Barrera, a guy Pacquiao beat so badly, everybody thought Pacman would gobble El Terrible.
Pacman lost.
Ditto with Juan Manuel Marquez. Prior to the rematch with Pacquiao, Marquez labored for a UD win with Barrera. Pre-rematch reports were so one-sided people started windering if Pacquiao was fighting an amateur.
You know what happened that day.
So it’s on to Clottey, a guy who thought he should have beaten Cotto.
Who’s the biggest winner in this kind of set up?
It’s Golden Boy and they’re having the last laugh.
With two fights involving the top two boxers, the PPV numbers will be split.
But Golden Boy will be making money off Mayweather vs. TBA and Pacquiao vs. Clottey.
An earlier dispute involving Top Rank and Golden Boy was settled in 2007, with Oscar dela Hoya’s outfit getting a percentage off Pacquiao every time he fights.
Not bad for Oscar, eh? They get to diss Pacquiao—remember the steroids allegations?—and make money off him.
As to Mayweather Jr., well, who’s left on the horizon for him?
Will he be chasing Miguel Cotto for March 13 or any other former Pacquiao foe?
To show that he could whup guys better than Manny?
But with only two months to go, Money still has no foe.
Well, he can have anybody else.
Just as long as that anybody doesn’t have a chance of winning, some say.
I wonder if Golden Boy will come out of retirement to fight Mayweather Jr. again.
Now that, would be quite a circus.
Before the arbitration proceedings to salvage the Mayweather Jr. vs. Pacquiao fight, Bob Arum said saving the bout was next to impossible.
But he did tease us.
That they’d revisit the fight later this year.
To be frank, I always expected Floyd vs. Pacquiao to push through.
I thought all this noise was designed to generate interest, even if it wasn’t needed.
But I guess, we all can learn from this.
A fight ain’t final if it ain’t final.
Just a few weeks ago, we all thought that one of the biggest fights in history was final.
It turns out Pacquiao and Mayweather will be fighting who gets to have the bigger audience on March 13.
It’s not the fight we wanted.
Oh well, at least they’re fighting.
