According to a recent report on ABS-CBN.com, 8-division world champion Manny Pacquiao held a press conference shortly after returning home to General Santos City, Philippines, informing those in attendance that negotiations for a fight with undefeated pound-for-pound champion Floyd Mayweather are currently taking place. “Negotiations are ongoing for my fight with Mayweather, but nothing is final,” he would comment. Evidently, the fighting congressman from the Philippines has been misinformed. Contrary to his belief, negotiations have yet to even begin and are far from ongoing, especially considering that both his advisor, Michael Koncz, and his promoter, Bob Arum, have made it crystal clear that they have no plans whatsoever to negotiate or even discuss Pacquiao’s next opponent until after the holidays.
“As to whom our next opponent is or whether Marquez IV, we are going to take a few days and relax. Let Manny enjoy his family and then we will sit down and talk. There is no rush. We usually don’t make a decision as to our next fight, when we fight in November, until after the Christmas holiday,” Koncz would tell Keith Terceira of MP8.ph, Manny Pacquiao’s official website, just last week. He would echo those exact same comments to Lem Satterfield of RingTV.com. “There’s no need to rush into anything. We’re not going to rush judgement about who we’re going to fight or when we’re going to fight. After the holiday season, we’ll get with Bob Arum and discuss options. The facts of the matter are that Manny Pacquiao just went through a very difficult fight. As always, we’ll take a couple of weeks just to relax. Manny will enjoy his family,” Koncz explained. “We haven’t even discussed anything with our promoter, Bob Arum, nor will we intend to discuss with our promoter, Bob Arum, anything about any fights probably until after the Christmas holiday. If anybody is inclined to come to us with a reasonable offer to fight, they can reach out to myself or to Bob Arum, but Manny is going to take some time off that he rightfully deservers. It’s that simple. Period.” And just as recently as this past Sunday, Koncz would again reiterate those sentiments to Filipino TV5 sports station AKTV. “Honestly, there’s been no discussions with Manny about boxing and we don’t plan to discuss the opponent [in 2012] until after the holidays,” said Koncz.
