MACAU: Manny Pacquiao and Chris Algieri are on a two-week, globe-trotting tour to promote their welterweight title fight in November, but the match the world truly wants to see looks further away than ever.
When Pacquiao met the press in Macau, questions about his elusive megafight with the undefeated American Floyd Mayweather met with a sharp response.
“Who’s that?” Pacquiao joked, when Mayweather was mentioned by reporters.
Pacquiao’s hall-of-fame trainer Freddie Roach was less jovial, conceding bluntly that the two boxing legends, both in the twilight of their glittering careers, may never be seen in the same ring. “We can’t waste our time waiting for him,” said Roach. “We’ve done everything we could to make that fight happen. It’s like, we’re available if he’s interested in it, but again we can’t sit around waiting for him.”
Eight-division world champion Pacquiao’s next date is a World Boxing Organisation welterweight title defence against the undefeated WBO junior welterweight title-holder Algieri on November 23 in Macau’s Cotai Arena.
The pair were in Macau on Monday and Shanghai yesterday, and they will move on to promotional events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York in the next 12 days.
In 2010, Pacquiao and Mayweather were close to agreeing a fight between the two greatest boxers of their generation, which could potentially have generated a record $300m in pay-per-view revenue.
But it fell through because Mayweather was unhappy with Pacquiao’s drug-testing procedures in training.
That issue receded after Pacquiao agreed to Olympic-style testing, and the Filipino icon expressed his frustration that a Mayweather clash has still moved no closer after getting his career back on track with comprehensive victories in the past nine months over Brandon Rios and Timothy Bradley.
“The possibility to fight with him, you know, the question is not for us,” Pacquiao said. “It’s for them because any time we are willing to fight, any time. I think that question belongs to them, their camp.”
The biggest hurdle that remains -- and it is a huge one -- is the animosity between Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank and Mayweather’s Golden Boy promotions, who have deals with rival pay-per-view networks HBO and Showtime, respectively.
Arum admitted HBO and Showtime had to “find a way to promote and satisfy both sides from a legal basis”, before the biggest money fight in the sport’s history could be agreed.
AFP
