De La Hoya reveals that Mayweather vs Pacquiao contract is almost finalized

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June 12th, 2010

By Chris Williams: Oscar De La Hoya spilled the beans about the negotiation status of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight, saying to the Univision television station yesterday “I think right now we are very, very close in finalizing the contracts. I can’t talk right now in detail about the negotiations but I can say that we are very close.” If the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight can be made, it would be possibly be the biggest fight in boxing history with both fighters making tens of millions each for the historic fight.

The only bad thing about that, however, is that boxing fans would be forced to pay $60 to see it on pay-per-view and it would likely be filled with a lot of boring, one-sided mismatches on the undercard. The last two Top Rank undercards at Yankee Stadium and the Cowboy Stadiums didn’t exactly have interesting undercard fights. I would hope that maybe Arum could match his Top Rank fighters against some top Golden Boy promoted fighters instead of pitting his fighters against each other on the undercard. It would be nice to see some different fighters for a change instead of seeing the same fighters that were on the last two cards. I’d like to some quality fights for a change instead of watching one massacre after another while waiting for the main even between Pacquiao and Mayweather.

This is a lot more info than what we’ve been receiving by Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who handles Pacquiao. Mayweather hasn’t said a word about what’s going on and neither has his adviser Leonard Ellerbe. Arum wanted there to be a freeze on revealing the negotiation status with the media because of the failure to put together a fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao last time they attempted to negotiate a fight in January and February 2010.

But it’s hardly the media’s fault that the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight didn’t get made last time out. It was more of a result of Mayweather and Pacquiao not agreeing about the blood testing methods for the fight for the drug testing that Mayweather wanted. There was nothing that could be done when Pacquiao didn’t want to meet Mayweather’s request of a 14 day cutoff rather than sticking to the 24 days he wanted as the cutoff for the testing.

Also, Arum and Pacquiao seemed to be in too big of a hurry to conclude the negotiations and hastily quit negotiations to take a fight against another Top Rank fighter Joshua Clottey. That fight didn’t do all that well on pay-per-view and seemed out of place at the huge Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. It looked like a mismatch going into the fight and ended up being just as much a mismatch as many people thought it would be, even though Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach kept saying it would be a more appealing fight than a Mayweather bout. That was quickly proven wrong when Clottey stationed himself against the ropes early on in the fight and pretty much stayed there, covering up and doing little to fight back for 12 rounds.