Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Phone Home
Everyone is getting as worked up as a gang of teenage boys having found a stash of old Playboys in a basement apartment…
The endless tit-for-tat between the camps of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao has been truly embarrassing. It has involved many characters and many cherished moments, and has been a dreary display of boxing’s unruliness for the non-boxing public to laugh about while elbowing each other in the ribs.
Mayweather’s copping a plea to domestic violence, which he now says never happened: Bob Arum’s pie in the sky Las Vegas version of Boyle’s Thirty Acres; Richard Schaefer’s blaming, finger pointing, and pandering to the lynch mob of Arum haters; and Oscar De La Hoya’s round-the-clock tweeting has made all the participants, which the exception of Pacquiao, who has maintained a dignified silence, look like a Ship of Fools toasting themselves with a giant iceberg approaching starboard.
Now comes the news that Mayweather and Pacquaio have actually spoken, on the telephone no less, and everyone is getting as worked up as a gang of teenage boys having found a stash of old Playboys in a basement apartment.
“They spoke,” Leonard Ellerbe, one of Floyd’s main men, told ESPN.com earlier today. “Floyd called him last night and the context of the conversation is between the two of them.”
Ellerbe has every reason to be tightlipped about what went down. Loose lips sink ships. It’s good that someone in Mayweather’s circle is remaining tightlipped. Now if they can keep the irrepressible Roger from adding his two cents we might actually be getting somewhere.
“I can’t say what exactly was said,” Ellerbe said, “but I know.”
How’s that for satisfying one’s curiosity?
“Floyd wants to fight Manny Pacquiao on May 5,” continued Ellerbe, “and he went as far as to reach out to Manny Pacquiao personally last night. Floyd has shown more than a willingness to get this fight done and this is really, really what he wants to do and what he wants to give to the fight fans.”
That’s not breaking news. That’s old news. Everyone knows that Mayweather wants to fight Pacquiao on May 5, and I’m sure Pacquiao, in a secure undisclosed location somewhere in the Philippines, has been kept appraised of every charge, slight and insult flying like spitballs from the U.S.
In addition, Floyd’s “willingness to get this fight done,” as Ellerbe puts it, is a rather sudden change of heart. Could it be nothing more than a reaction to Manny’s subpar performance against Marquez in his last fight? Before that, all we ever seemed to hear was “Take the test. Take the test.” Does anybody beside me remember that? Or I am being unfair for having the gift of remembrance?
Almost everyone I’ve spoken to is worn out by this nonsense. The richest fight in history between the presumably two best fighters on the planet should have been made years ago. That it hasn’t is a slap in the face, or a sucker punch if you will, to the sport that is near and dear to us all. With Mayweather’s 90-day jail sentence awaiting him, and several opponents’ names having been dangled in front of fight fans like a carrot on a stick, is the fight everyone wants to see any closer to becoming reality?
Or are the players blowing smoke for a change?
