Floyd Mayweather Jr. isn’t exactly moved by Manny Pacquiao going on the record in his acceptance of taking 10% less of the purse for a potential super-fight between the world’s top two boxers.
“Manny Pacquiao can’t tell Floyd Mayweather [expletive],” Mayweather Jr. advisor Leonard Ellerbe told The Times on Friday.
“If and when the fight takes place, Floyd will dictate the terms.”
Ellerbe assessed Pacquiao’s mention of Mayweather Jr. this week on a promotional tour to Los Angeles, New York, ESPN studios and Mexico City as an “amateurish, transparent” way to promote the Filipino superstar’s fourth bout against Mexico’s Juan Manuel Marquez on Dec. 8 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
The Marquez bout, said Ellerbe, is one, “that, in my opinion, no one cares about.”
Pacquiao, coming off a controversial split-decision loss June 9 to Timothy Bradley, said Friday that “win or lose,” he’ll accept the unbeaten Mayweather Jr. receiving 55% of a purse to Pacquiao’s 45% -- if long-failed negotiations ever succeed.
“He can be introduced first, have top billing … he can wear my trunks,” Pacquiao was quoted Friday by publicist Fred Sternburg in Mexico. “I don’t care. I just want to get him in the ring.”
On Thursday at ESPN, Pacquiao said indicators from current world super-welterweight champion Mayweather are that he’s afraid to take the fight and risk blemishing his perfect record.
Yet, Mayweather, nicknamed “Money,” clearly wants to maximize his side of the pot in a bout that would likely eclipse Mayweather’s record 2007 split-decision victory over Oscar De La Hoya that was the most lucrative bout in the sport’s history -- with 2.15 million pay-per-view buys.
Mayweather Jr. was not available for comment Friday.
Ellerbe declined to reveal what percentage Mayweather would want to get in the ring with Pacquiao.
Mayweather’s May 5 unanimous-decision victory over Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto generated 1.5 million buys while Pacquiao’s bout against Bradley was said to have generated 850,000 buys, a figure Ellerbe disputes.
HBO pay-per-view never publicly announced the Pacquiao-Bradley figures, unlike its Friday announcement that Saturday’s Sergio Martinez victory over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for the World Boxing Council middleweight championship generated 475,000 buys.
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