Mention the names Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. to fight fans and the reaction is instant hyperventilating. To 50% of those fans, Pacquiao is the best now, maybe the best ever. To the other 50%, that describes Mayweather.
Boxing wants Pacquiao-Mayweather. It is its modern-day Foreman-Ali. Football can have its Super Bowl and baseball can have its World Series. Boxing wants Manny and Floyd. In the same ring, dancing and throwing. Stopping all the talk and the hype and the theories. Settling it, once and for all, with the gloves on and the bright lights turned up.
But there are problems, all well documented, and any straw poll taken on the subject these days will elicit plenty of theories on why the fight will never happen:
? Mayweather doesn’t want to risk his unbeaten record.
? Pacquiao, a Philippine congressman with some need to retain a measure of dignity, is turned off by Mayweather’s gangsta act and does not even want to be in the same room with the guy.
? Pacquiao got bigger by using steroids and will duck Mayweather’s specific drug-testing demands because he fears the outcome.
