Mailbag: Mayweather-Pacquiao bout not dead
The highly anticipated fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao may not be dead just yet. Though Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, whose company has already reserved May 5 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas to host the bout, is concerned that Pacquiao’s team is not interested, Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum said he’s simply not ready to talk now.
Arum did not rule out conversations for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but said he is not prepared to talk to Schaefer about it at the moment because he has a full schedule. Arum is promoting a WBC middleweight title fight in Houston between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Peter Manfredo Jr. on Saturday, then has a media day for Miguel Cotto in Florida, the Thanksgiving holiday, and then the Cotto-Margarito pay-per-view in New York on Dec. 3.
“Our position is simple and that is that right now, we’re not ready to talk,” Arum said Tuesday. “I’m in Los Angeles now, but I’m flying to New York in a couple of hours. I have a big fight to promote on Dec. 3.”
“Manny is on his way back to the Philippines today. In a few weeks, whether it’s a [Juan Manuel] Marquez rematch, a Mayweather fight, a fight with Timothy Bradley, or whatever, we’ll sit down with the appropriate parties and talk. But we’re not ready to talk about it now.”
Schaefer said he would like Arum to meet with him in Los Angeles later this week with retired federal judge Daniel Weinstein, an arbiter who has mediated several disputes between the companies.
Schaefer said he believes Arum is not interested in making the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, and so he said he is ready to move on and find an opponent who is willing to fight Mayweather. There are indications that Mayweather’s team has reached out to middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, though that could not be confirmed.
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