What? A 60-50 split?
Yes, a 60-50 purse split could make the megafight between Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao and American Floyd Mayweather Jr a possibility.
How to do it? By asking Top Rank?s Bob Arum and Home Box Office (HBO) to underwrite the difference from their shares of the pay per view (PPV) proceeds.
As you see, half of the total revenues from the sale of PPVs goes to the promoters and HBO. The other half goes to the main draws of the boxing card.
Both Pacquiao and Mayweather will go home happy and it will not appear either one of them backed off from their original demands.
Manny gets 50 percent of the purse as he wished and Floyd takes his 60 per cent, courtesy of Arum and HBO.
Of course, Mayweather gets the bigger pie under this scheme but it may be the only way to bring the two together atop the ring.
Not really Solomonic but enough to get the match going.
Arum did it before in the Pacquiao-Hatton fight. There is no reason he could not do it given the huge windfall he will get from this potential Fight of the Century, both in terms revenue and historical importance.
The fight could generate as much as three million buys and make Pacquiao at least US$40 million richer and Floyd more moneyed to the tune of US$60 million.
Arum and HBO could also include a guaranteed rematch clause with the winner getting the bigger slice of the pie.
Depending on the outcome, all of the major players could be tons richer in a span of one year.
If a trilogy demands for it who knows how high the ceiling could be for everybody.
Both Arum and HBO should realize that Manny is not going to fight more than thrice before the demands of his political career force him to retire.
And Mayweather is spring chicken no more.
Come on, let?s make this a fight.
