Unless Ricky Hatton decides to make a slight alteration in the lyrics, Manny Pacquiao will continue to sing the same old tune and would not bother to look the other way, and would probably just opt to shop for a new opponent.
Pacquiao’s lawyer Franklin Gacal said yesterday that Top Rank boss Bob Arum has been trying to save the Filipino boxing hero’s super-lightweight match against the British slugger, already scheduled for May 2 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, from being scrapped.
Despite Arum’s efforts to find a way to please Pacquiao, widely recognized as the current flag carrier of boxing, the Filipino star remains steadfast in his stand that he should get a bigger slice of the fight purse over Hatton in the sharing scheme.
"Bob is trying to change the equation but it is very minimal and there’s almost no difference to the end result (of 50-50 sharing)," said Gacal from Bacolod City where Pacquiao is gracing the inaugurals of the National Amateur Boxing championships.
Gacal said an increase of $ 300,000 (P14.4 million) to a maximum of $ 500,000 (P24 million) is being dangled by Arum to Pacquiao so he would change his mind and proceed with the Hatton showdown.
From their preliminary numbers crunching, Gacal believes that the revenue from the Hatton fight, based on the proposed sharing scheme, will not even surpass the paycheck that Pacquiao earned from fighting Oscar De La Hoya last year.
It is estimated that Pacquiao, who polished off the Golden Boy in eight brutal rounds in Las Vegas last December, got $ 15 million from the De La Hoya fight.
Hatton is using his huge popularity in England as leverage in the negotiations as his team expects at least a million pay-perview buys in Britain alone, and that Pacquiao should agree right away since in the past Hatton fights, his opponents were not entitled even to a single cent in the pay-per-view earnings.
Arum has penciled a late January press tour of London and Manchester in England for Pacquiao and Hatton plus a similar gig in late-February in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the United States.
By March 1, Pacquiao should already be training at the celebrated Wild Card gym in Hollywood under his trainer and mentor Freddie Roach, if the Top Rank promoter would have his way.
But the world still awaits, and Pacquiao’s song remains the same.
Source: mb.com.ph
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