| 20 January 2012
I've been saying all along (and I'm far from the only one) that the only way we'd see a Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight happen in the first half of 2011 is if Pacquiao told promoter Bob Arum that he wants that fight, and only that fight. But maybe there's another way after all. Maybe the two best boxers in the world could simply talk to each other on the phone and work things out between themselves.
It sounds crazy, but we now know that it happened yesterday: Mayweather called Pacquiao in the Philippines, and it was apparently about the fight and splitting the purse 50-50. Other than that, we don't know much else.
One thing we can be pretty sure of is that if direct contact between the two boxers doesn't get this figured out, nothing will. Hopefully Pacquiao and Mayweather spoke about not just the fact that the world has been waiting for this bout to come together, but that the timing will never be better. Neither man is getting any younger, and if one of them were to lose while pushing the mega-fight off until later this year or in 2013, it would certainly have an adverse effect on things.
Love him or hate him, Mayweather put his money (no pun intended... well, maybe a little) where his mouth was by reaching out to Pacquiao directly. He's putting almost all of his eggs in this particular basket, apparently ruling out Saul Alvarez, thought to be the frontrunner to face him in May if a deal with Pac-Man couldn't be reached. I fully expect he's going to fight someone, so you can't call it Manny or bust, but aside from publicly stating he wants to fight Pacquiao, calling him out on social media and then calling him on the phone, it's hard to figure what else he can try.
The cynical anti-Floyd fans are likely to point out again that Mayweather may only be taking this stance now because:
1) Pacquiao looked less then stellar in his last outing against Juan Manuel Marquez, making Money more confident than ever that he'll win.
2) He feels like he may not be at his best after serving his prison sentence, making it imperative to do the fight now.
Either or both of those things may be true. I don't care, and I think I speak for many, many boxing fans out there in that respect. What I want more than anything is for us to stop talking about if the fight is going to happen and why it's not coming together and to finally start anticipating it in earnest.
If all it took was a phone call to turn things around, I give Mayweather all the credit in the world for picking up the phone. We'll find out soon enough.
