Manny Pacquiao (left) and Floyd Mayweather Jr. attend the Miami Heat-Milwaukee Bucks NBA game. Screengrab from the Heat’s Twitter account
MANILA, Philippines–If the boxing ring won’t host them together, maybe the parquet floor will.
During Wednesday morning’s (Manila time) NBA game between the Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks, the unprecedented meeting of the two welterweight champions happened inside the American Airlines Arena in Florida.
Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2 38 KOs) and Floyd Mayweather Jr. (47-0-0 26 KOs) have been linked in negotiations for a megafight that may happen on May 2. While they have been trading jabs on social media, the two boxing icons have yet to finalize the details of the fight—if it will even happen.
Pacquiao decided to come to the Heat-Milwaukee Bucks game. He’s a professional basketball player in the Philippines and has a good relationship with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who is of Filipino descent.
Mayweather has been a regular courtside attendee at Heat games for several years.
And it just so happened they picked the same game. Pacquiao said he didn’t expect to see Mayweather — who had a seat just a few feet from Spoelstra’s spot on the side of the court where the Heat have their bench.
Miami’s jumbotron promptly showed the two boxers in a split screen where Pacquiao and Mayweather seemed amused looking at the encounter, which is the closest thing to their potential fight. The split screen came with the caption “Coming in 2015?”
“He gave his number to me and said we will communicate with each other,” said Pacquiao, adding that he had never before met Mayweather in person.
Asked to clarify if the exchange meant the two would negotiate directly about meeting in the ring, Pacquiao said that was the case.
Mayweather did not respond to a question asked by an Associated Press reporter. “Not now,” one of his security guards said, as Mayweather fiddled with his phone.
Both fighters have previously expressed confidence in their capability to beat each other.
“I know that he’s not on my level,” Mayweather said last month.
Pacquiao, on the other hand, twitted recently that “I can easily beat @FloydMayweather, I believe that.”
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