Team Pacquiao surprised me with the announcement today that they would agree to the blood testing at 14 days out to move the Floyd Mayweather fight negotiations on to the next chapter.
Pacquiao previously was stuck on 24 days. Maybe Manny and promoter Bob Arum devised this scheme weeks ago. Maybe Arum had nothing to do with it. Details are still sketchy.
I would have thought Pacquio would have had his promoter Arum make the announcement since Arum had put up a gag order of no negotiating though the media recently.
If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, this puts a little pressure on the Mayweather side to either select the Las Vegas MGM Grand or Dallas’ Cowboy Stadium as the fight venue in pretty short order and get this promotion rolling.
All indications are that Mayweather wants the fight at the MGM Grand and with the fight this close I don’t know how much of a fight Arum is going to put up on Pacquiao’s behalf of Cowboys Stadium.
If anything, the involvement by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones hosting Pacquio vs. Joshua Clottey back on March 13 increased the value of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao and Jones should walk with a couple of ringside tickets to the big fight for his troubles.
Pacquiao has claimed since his last defeat, to Erik Morales via decision, that blood taken from him just days before the fight weakened him. He has won 12 consecutive fights since then.
They say you can’t con a conman. 14 days before November 13 sounds like October 31st and Halloween in the United States and if anything spooky were to happen Manny and Freddie would be at the Wild Card Gym for what that is worth.
Other than April 1st, October 31st would be the last day I would want to take a blood test or any kind of test.
