The clock is tolling its closing seconds over Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather this weekend, and there is nothing either of them can do to beat the count. If these two extraordinary fighters do not agree very soon to meet in the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on 2 May for their respective world welterweight titles, they will incur not only the wrath of millions of fans but that of the industry suits who have paid them and indulged them since this fight was first mooted in late 2009.
Pressure to conclude their tortuous negotiations to seal the biggest contest in boxing history has built to the point of combustion, as a fevered media look for significance in the tiniest whisper. However, while unconfirmed rumours on Saturday claimed the Filipino has already signed a contract that would see him get a 40/60 split of a pot worth as much as $250m, the final say belongs to Mayweather, who has signed nothing.
The Las Vegan was hanging with his basketball buddies in New York, after hoovering up more than $800,000 worth of jewellery for himself and his entourage. Before that, he had partied in the Caribbean and Miami. Before that, he promised to go on a speaking tour in Australia but reneged, claiming visa problems.
Pacquiao, meanwhile, was waiting by his phone this weekend at his mountain training camp north of Manila, having told local fight writers: “The ball is in his court.”
At the appropriately named office complex, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino – about four hours’ drive north of Pacquiao’s Hollywood base at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym – the fighter’s chief adviser, Mike Koncz, also was waiting for a call.
Those are the bare logistical realities of a saga that began more than five years ago, meandering from one false dawn to another since, and stretched now over thousands of miles while Mayweather, the single most powerful individual in the fight game, decides whether it is financially and physically worth his while to risk his 47-0 record against the one man most capable of beating him.
As Mayweather fights, so he negotiates: teasingly. He has demanded blood – literally – in the form of Olympic-standard drug tests (agreed), the bigger slice of the cash (agreed) and a separation of promotional campaigns so he can retain editorial control over his Showtime documentary (agreed), leaving Pacquiao’s people to deal with the co-broadcasters, HBO.
Yet, despite such absurd control freakery, Mayweather still feels inclined to lead us a dance. He traditionally has agreed his early-May fights by the middle of February, so we are at that point – if he deems it so.
As a Pacquiao insider put it to the Observer on Saturday night: “Until Mr Mayweather formally agrees to fight Manny, all the stories, negotiations and good intentions mean nothing.”
Two weeks ago, Koncz sounded unusually upbeat after the fighters sat down for an hour in Pacquiao’s hotel room in Miami. “This was more of a private business meeting, and I believe that as of today, Floyd is sincere about wanting the fight after last night,” Koncz said then. Sincere or not, Mayweather has remained as elusive as he is in the ring.
Koncz is the link man between Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, the CBS corporation chief executive, Les Moonves – who overseas Showtime – and the HBO chairman and CEO, Richard Plepler. In the background is Mayweather’s business partner, Al Haymon, who gives fewer interviews than Howard Hughes.
Yet, unwittingly, Mayweather, the supreme manipulator, has managed to do what most fight fans and commentators had previously regarded as improbable: he has boxed himself into a corner.
He craves respect. He wants to be spoken of in the same breath as the greatest fighters of all time. However, because of his obduracy – undiluted by the Money Team who trail him everywhere – he has ensured that such respect might not be forthcoming.
It does not matter much who is most responsible for the delays, Mayweather is perceived as the one who has consistently put up obstacles on the road to the showdown that should have happened in 2010. Arum is also cast as a villain but it is Mayweather who could have made this fight pretty much any time he wanted to.
The widespread suspicion – one with substance – is that Mayweather was waiting until he saw sufficient signs of decline in Pacquiao before agreeing to the fight. The consensus is that all the objections he articulated since the first talks were no more than excuses.
This should have been a fight to set alongside any of those between Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Durán, Tommy Hearns and Marvin Hagler, and fans will not thank Mayweather if, as seems likely, the reality does not match their expectations.
What we are left with is not a fight between two outstanding champions of competing styles and abilities at or near their best, but a lesser contest between a pair of worn if still excellent warriors. They will be slower, less sharp, not quite as brilliant. Certainly, they could draw the best that is left out of each other; the fight, in that case, might even be a classic of sorts, as their dulled skills mesh, by force of time rather than design. However, there is a distinct likelihood that the fight could be a stinker, with Mayweather running, Pacquiao chasing, and neither able or willing to engage the other properly in the dramatic combat we all want.
Here is a sobering statistic: Durán was 38 and Leonard was 33 when they fought each other for the third time, after participating in two modern classics; Mayweather will be 38 and Pacquiao 36 if and when they meet for the first time.
When asked last September if he feared retiring without having established a rivalry to match those of the great fighters that had gone before him, Mayweather rolled his famous shoulders, fixed a stare and moved away from the confrontation. It’s what he does – and he doesn’t much give a damn what anyone else thinks.
