By Scott Heritage
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Representatives from the camps of Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather will stage a final meeting on Tuesday to discuss a number of issues. Chief among them is Golden Boy’s stake in Manny Pacquiao and the drug testing issue stopping the big fight from happening.
As far as the pair meeting in March, this is probably a last chance saloon for the two sides to reach an agreement. After all for the biggest fight in either man’s career they will need a decent amount of time to train and plan strategies.
And before anyone asks, yes the obligatory chest thumping has already been started by both sides regarding the talks. Top Rank and Pacquiao already have a number of alternative opponents on stand by, with Yuri Foreman being the most heavily favored. Golden Boy and Mayweather apparently think that their testing demands will eventually be agreed to. Speaking to FanHouse, Mayweather advisor Leonard Ellerbe said:
“I just think that at the end of the day, Manny Pacquiao will put his country on his back and eventually step up to the plate and agree to the random blood and urine testing. Because there is nothing out there that could do that could remotely come close to being involved in the biggest fight in the history of the sport,” “Manny has surrounded himself with some very intelligent people, and I can’t imagine guys like Michael Koncz and Freddie Roach advising him against doing that.?
Hopefully Golden Boy aren’t going into the meeting with this attitude otherwise they might well leave empty handed. Egos will need to checked at the door if both sides want any progress to be made, and both going into the meeting expecting the other side to have caved in will only end with another stalemate.
The problem so far is that both sides have simply refused to budge on their demands, and the longer Mayweather insists on his testing demands, the more he’s going to aggravate and alienate Pacquiao and Top Rank. There are already rumors of Top Rank now demanding a public apology from Mayweather for the fight to go ahead, and this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Golden Boy might also insist that Pacquiao drops his lawsuit for the fight to go ahead, and before anyone knows it, the fight is called off.
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Scott Heritage covers both MMA and Boxing read his other articles at Pittsburgh-Fight-Sports-Examiner