Manny Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum is reportedly optimistic that a mega-fight deal between the Filipino icon and unbeaten US fighter Floyd Mayweather Jr will be made in the next couple of days.
The New York Post reported on Friday that Arum is down to negotiating the final details of a contract for the much-awaited welterweight showdown tentatively penned in for May 2 in Las Vegas.
“The issues are being narrowed down to extraordinarily small points,” Arum told the newspaper. “I’m optimistic it will all be put together in the next couple of days.”
Mayweather said he would not fight Pacquiao as long as Arum was his promoter after a dispute many years ago. Blood test issues helped scuttle talks five years ago, but after the fighters met at an NBA game in Miami earlier this week, the bout expected to be the sport’s biggest-ever moneyspinner appears close to a reality.
“Everybody is doing the right thing,” Arum told the Post on Friday. “We’re looking to complete the paperwork. Everything is moving in the right direction. Hopefully, the next couple of days it will get done.”
The report said network issues are all that remain to be sorted. Mayweather has a contract with Showtime, while Pacquiao has a deal with HBO, but both stand to gain by coming together for Mayweather-Pacquiao bout that could approach US$300 million.
The last time such a deal was made between the telecast rivals, it produced a Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis matchup in 2002.
Pacquiao has been calling out Mayweather for months, his latest comment last week on Twitter being: “I can easily beat Floyd Mayweather, I believe that.”
After meeting at a Miami Heat game, Mayweather and Pacquiao spent an hour in the Asian star’s hotel suite talking about the possibility of meeting in the ring, Arum said.
“I think it helped a lot because we were all putting papers together, and there was still a question as to whether Floyd really wanted to do the fight or not,” Arum said. “Based on the meeting with Pacquiao in the hotel suite, Manny and [Pacquiao adviser] Michael Koncz were convinced Floyd absolutely wants to do the fight.”
Filipino southpaw Pacquiao, 57-5 with two drawn and 38 knockouts, has won three fights in a row since being knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in his fourth bout against the Mexican.
“Pac-Man,” who is 36, won a unanimous decision over Chris Aligieri in Macao in November last year — his most recent fight.
Mayweather, 47-0 with 26 knockouts, turns 38 this month and has two more fights in the rich Showtime deal that has made him the highest-paid athlete in the world. Should he win them both, Mayweather would match the iconic 49-0 record of 1950s legend Rocky Marciano, who retired as an undefeated heavyweight champion.
Mayweather is coming off a unanimous points decision over Argentine fighter Marcos Maidana in September — a rematch of a bout in May that Mayweathwer won by a majority decision.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier