Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. FILE PHOTOS
Like all the great showdowns in boxing history, the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. megafight should be a multifight series, according to the Filipino’s Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach.
Roach, interviewed by Fight Game on Boxingscene.com, said that even though neither Pacquiao nor Mayweather has signed on the dotted line, their projected fight should be at least a two-match affair.
The prospective clash between two of boxing’s greatest fighters of this generation and future Hall of Famers excites not just boxing fans but even casual sports fans as well.
Pacquiao figured in remarkable fight series with Mexican legends Juan Manuel Marquez and Erik Morales.
“Doing a multifight contract, I thought that was the best idea in the world,” Roach told Boxingscene.com recently. “I would love to see these guys fight more than once.
“If they split the first two, we could have a third, there could be a rubber match. We could have three big fights. It’s been done before.”
He told the well-followed boxing portal that one fight cannot answer the all-important question: Who is the best fighter between the two.
Stumbling blocks, however, line many avenues to the much-awaited Pacquiao-Mayweather setto.
Mayweather is asking not just the lion’s share of the purse but seemingly impossible things like banning Pacquiao’s Filipino trainer Buboy Fernandez from the eight-division champion’s corner and giving Top Rank Promotions boss Bob Arum no part in the negotiations.
And that irks Roach.
“I mean this guy thinks he runs the (expletive) show,” Roach also told Boxingscene.com.
Pacquiao has said he is willing to bend backward in order to make the fight happen with the brash, undefeated American, who has been accused by many fight pundits of ducking the Filipino superstar.
Pacquiao’s camp has gone great lengths in the last five years to strike a deal only for Mayweather to throw a spanner in the works.
“He is so in love with that zero on that record,” Roach said of Mayweather. “That’s the thing with boxing. If you are champion of the world, you fight everybody, you don’t duck anybody and you fight all comers.
“If he retires not fighting Manny, that will be a big question when he’s asked for things. I think that will ruin his legacy.”
Mayweather has reportedly demanded that the fight be shown on Showtime, instead of HBO to which Pacquiao is connected. The flamboyant pound-for-pound king also turned down a 60-40 revenue split offered by Pacquiao’s camp.
But there has been a renewed clamor for the fight to finally happen in 2015. And Mayweather fanned it by announcing on Showtime Sports last Dec. 13 (Manila time) that he would fight Pacquiao on May 2 next year.
The date falls within the week of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo —when fight fans in Mexico and the United States expect one or both fighters seeing action to be Mexican.
Mayweather, who has fought five times in that week since 2007 compared to Pacquiao’s two, said he has the right to fight on that date because he has already beaten the two boxers—Mexico’s Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto—initially penciled to fight each other on the same day.
The Filipino superstar’s much-awaited clash with Mayweather, if and when it finally happens, could easily rank among the best in boxing, alongside Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier, Ali-Norton, Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti and Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield. Marc Anthony Reyes