AFTER countless negotiations and almost coming up with an agreement, the super fight between the legendary “Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya and pound for pound king Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao on Dec 6 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is off.
Both parties have already agreed on the 147-pound weight limit and the use of eight-ounce gloves of any desired brand but Pacquiao turned down the deal of De La Hoya’s offer of a 70-30 split in the revenues.
The 29-year-old Gen. Santos City fighter wanted a 60-30 split.
“Bob told me today that Manny has declined to accept the terms,” said Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer to ESPN.com. “I had a nice conversation with Bob. We’ll move on and I guess Manny will move on.”
The six-division world champion wouldn’t budge to Pacquiao’s proposal which was relayed to his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank which led to Pacquiao in switching his sights on to another fight.
“Richard and I had a good meeting and we resolved the other issues,” said Arum. Oscar was adamant about it being 70-30 or no deal. Richard told me that and that I transmitted it to Pacquiao and his people in the Philippines. They told me that there was no deal and to look to make another fight.”
Arum believes that Pacquiao rejected the deal because he felt that the split on the revenues wasn’t fair.
“The question in a fighter’s mind is not how much they’re going to make, but what is a fair split,” Arum said. “Forget the ultimate number. They have to perceive what they are getting is fair. The deal we were working on was a lot of money for both guys. The question is what is a fair split? I thought somewhere between 30 and 40 percent for Manny was fair.”
Arum said that De La Hoya wouldn’t give Pacquiao a bigger percentage of the split because the latter gave retired pugilist Floyd “Pretty Boy” Mayweather Jr. that same fraction of the revenues in their mega fight last year, a fight which De La Hoya lost via split decision. (EKA)
