By Richard Wacha: Manny Pacquiao walked away from an offer of a 70-30 purse split by Oscar De La Hoya earlier today, and instead will look for another fight elsewhere. Pacquiao, the WBC lightweight champion, had initially asked for a 60-40 purse split at the opening of negotiations while De La Hoya offered 70-30.
However, when De La Hoya reportedly refused to move an inch from his original 70-30 offer and meet Pacquiao halfway, Manny decided to walk from bargaining table and look for a fight against possibly Humberto Soto. The fight is now off the table unless either De La Hoya or Pacquiao decide to come in a slightly different price than what they were originally asking for. The sides can always change their minds and come in at a lesser percentage, but if they don’t move quickly, it will probably be too late to save the fight.
The news is more than disappointing, because it seems as if there was no real negotiating going on, at least in terms of the PPV purse split that is. It seems as if both fighters had their minds made up from the beginning about what they thought was fair in terms of a percentage split of the purse, and unless the other side was willing to move, they were going to have problems.
The gloves, a sticking point with Pacquiao wanting the smaller 8-ounce gloves and De La Hoya wanting the 10-ounce ones, was taken care of, with De La Hoya agreeing to use the smaller 8 ounce gloves. Both fighters also agreed to come in at the 147 lb weight limit for the fight, which obviously would impact De La Hoya, who hasn’t fought at that less of weight in years dating back to his bout with Arturo Gatti in March 2001.
Pacquiao would have been looking at making a huge payday, perhaps as much as $10 million, if he had accepted the smaller 30% offer given to him by De La Hoya. However, as instead of focusing on the huge amount of money he would be getting, which would be double the amount that he has ever received for a fight, Pacquiao remained concerned with the percentages of the deal, not dollars. It didn’t help things, though, that De La Hoya didn’t budge ever from his original offer of 70-30. Usually, there’s some give and take when it comes to money, but from the looks of it, neither fighter wanted to accept less than what they originally asked for or offered at the start of the deal-making process.
With the fight negotiations perhaps off for good, De La Hoya has to look around for someone else for his last fight of his career on December 6th. Fighters like Antonio Margarito, Sergio Mora, Felix Trinidad, Winky Wright, Paul Williams and Miguel Cotto would seem like the ideal opponents for De La Hoya to choose from. For obvious reasons, Margarito and Williams would be the toughest of the bunch, and would for that reason, be the more interesting fights for boxing fans to watch.
However, De La Hoya probably doesn’t want to end his career on a losing note getting knocked out, so he might choose an easier option. Trinidad, who previously beat De La Hoya years ago in 1999, would hold some appeal, but he hasn’t looked good as of late, losing three out of his last five fights. The fans, however, would still flock to see De La Hoya fight Trinidad due their excitement of the previous fight.