Talk heats up for a Money-Manny rematch

THERE’S no need to crank up the rumor mill about a possible rematch between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Paquiao.

Even as we speak, chatter has sprouted wings yet again about the elite boxing rivals.

The latest talk is a reboot of what this space reported months before. That both fighters could be planning a faceoff in the United Arab Emirates or some other place in the Arab world where money is no object to sheikhs willing to bankroll a Mayweather-Pacquiao 2.

A scoop from TMZ, the television channel with a flair for dramatics and sensational news has Mayweather visiting Dubai last week. That’s less that two months after Pacquiao received a royal welcome himself from rulers of the Metal Metaphor.

The city has struggled with that tag and has hit the news often for its Manhattan-like sky-scrapers and the slums for foreign construction workers who built its glass towers in the desert.

Mayweather reportedly went to Dubai to pick out, among others, a diamond-studded watch to add to his list of ostentatious purchases.

But seriously, folks!

The king of excess would not jet to the oil-rich UAE with Team Money in tow just for a shopping spree! Unless he had the ear of potentates for what could be regarded still as the ring redux of the ages.

A rematch will not make more money than the $600 million in revenues generated by the lackluster first bout that made both Money and Manny the highest-paid athletes in ring annals.

But it won’t be a shabby payday, either for both fighters—specially for Mayweather who many ring diehards believe to be in faux retirement—if it happens in Dubai.

Dong Secuya’s reliable PhilBoxing.com is reporting that dangled in Dubai were $200 million for Mayweather and $100 million for Pacquiao.

Those are probably paltry amounts for the sheikhs eager to host a world boxing event while continuously showcasing Burj Khalifa—the tallest building in the world—that juts farther into the sky than any other edifice constructed by humans.

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Former national sports statistician Joseph Dumuk was reciting a roll call of our Olympic heroes recently.

Dumuk is content with remembering yesterday because of our long drought in Olympic medals. He also laments the fact that close shaves cost us at least three gold medals from past Olympic Games.

Some of Dumuk’s notes:

Since we first took part in the Summer Games 91 years ago, our athletes have brought home two silver medals and seven bronzes—2 silvers and 3 bronzes from boxing and two bronzes each in athletics and swimming.

With our last medal—a silver, courtesy of boxer Onyok Velasco in the Atlanta Games—we have been shutout in four Olympics since 1996.

Incidentally, Velasco lost a close one to Bulgaria’s Daniel Petrov Bojilov in the lightweight finals in Atlanta.

Two other loses by a whisker were suffered by boxer Anthony Villanueva in the hands of Stanislav Stepashkin of Russia in the 1964 Olympics and high jumper Simeon Toribio who lost the gold via a three-way tie-break in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.