Saranggani Rep. Manny Pacquiao FILE PHOTO
GENERAL SANTOS CITY—All Manny Pacquiao wanted was peace and quiet on his birthday yesterday.
The mere mention of Floyd Mayweather Jr. was enough to make him uneasy.
“I don’t want to talk and think about him because it will only spoil my day,” said Pacquiao, who turned 36.
Instead, the Sarangani representative and eight-division world champion opted to give gifts to his destitute constituents in Maasim town.
Pressed for comment on Mayweather’s recent tirade against him posted at fighthype.com, Pacquiao said: “Mayweather’s all talk. I think he doesn’t want to fight me.”
Pacquiao was referring to Mayweather’s recent challenge to fight him while continuing to revive old issues that stifled earlier attempts to stage boxing’s biggest bout ever.
Among these are the drug testing protocol and revenue sharing.
Pacquiao has long agreed to any manner of drug testing and has repeatedly said he would let the unbeaten American have the bigger slice of total earnings, including the fight purse.
In his latest post, Mayweather took a jab at the pay-per-view hits (over 400,000) that Pacquiao tallied when he knocked down Chris Algieri six times en route to a lopsided unanimous decision in Macau last night.
According to Mayweather, his fight against Carl os Baldomir generated even more hits than Pacquiao-Algieri. A check, however, showed Mayweather-Bald omir made only 325,000 buys.
Mayweather also dismissed Pacquiao’s line of entertaining and giving back to the fans.
Mayweather said Pacquiao can fight for free, but he’s not fighting without a prize money.
Again raising Juan Manuel Marquez’s sixth-round knockout of Pacquiao in 2012, Mayweather said the Filipino suffered the fate because he was “slugging, not boxing.” Pacquiao played tough guy and didn’t fight smart, according to Mayweather.
It was so unlike Pacquiao’s fight against Brandon Rios, also in Macau, where he boxed, Mayweather said.
The unbeaten American again made no mention of touching off negotiations for Pacquiao-Mayweather to happen in May 2, as he mentioned in the United States television program Showtime Sports.
Pacquiao said he does not want to dwell on these issues for the time being.
If only for his day, Pacquiao said he wants to be happy spending time with his family, friends and constituents and be the perfect host to his guests in the birthday party, set at KCC Mall here last night.
Pacquiao promised to train his sights again on Mayweather in the coming days.