Arum now being labeled as the roadblock to big fight

We still have no official word on the next Manny Pacquiao fight. The window of exclusivity for negotiating with Floyd Mayweather went bye-bye last Friday and now Top Rank has moved on to other potential opponents. It's clear Team Mayweather doesn't want to fight this year, but now some media members are saying the same thing about Top Rank's Bob Arum, and that he never wanted the fight this year either. David Mayo of the Grand Rapids Press says Arum never negotiated in good faith:

Arum relayed through HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg the terms he would find acceptable for making the fight. You can bet they were favorable terms for Pacquiao, which is to say terms Mayweather very well might find onerous. They probably included a 50-50 split in money, or something close to it. Arum steadfastly refused to specify that. Second, Greenburg relayed those terms to the Mayweather camp, which never responded to them. Arum might as well have called me to relay the terms. I have all the same phone numbers and could’ve had the same conversations -- or lack thereof.

Mayo says that's not a negotiation as Arum calling it:

My 30-year-old Webster’s New World Dictionary -- the one that one of my dogs tore the cover off of years ago -- defines negotiate as “to confer, bargain, or discuss with a view to reaching a settlement.” Arum got a lot of mileage with the media in saying Manny Pacquiao had agreed to terms. Sending a message through an intermediary who isn’t empowered to respond or counteroffer doesn’t qualify. And that Greenburg converses often with the Mayweather camp means absolutely nothing.

He says Arum's always wanted a Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito or Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight:

Failing that, what Arum planned all along was to have two of his own fighters face each other on Nov. 13 -- Pacquiao against either Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito -- which seems the near-certain resolution now. That keeps all the money in house, gets another probable win for Pacquiao, and keeps him from being exposed to Mayweather for a few more months, if at all.

Mayo said Mayweather adviser Leonard Ellerbe predicted this is exactly what would go down back at the start of the year. 

 

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