Ron Borges on Pacquiao/Hatton
By Jim Murphy January 24th, 2009Over at THE SWEET SCIENCE, boxing writer extrodinaire Ron Borges looks at the on again/off again/now on again megafight between reigning “pound for pound” champion Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton:
Pacquiao took Hatton and his promoters, Oscar De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer, to the brink and then made them blink. He did the same thing a few months back when he forced De La Hoya to throw him an extra three per cent (62-38 rather than 65-35 split of their Dec. 8 fight) and then made him blink again throughout a one-sided eight round beating that ended only when De La Hoya quit on his stool.
That dominating victory over boxing’s Golden Boy, coupled with the fact Pacquiao believed he’d made him back down in their negotiations as well, led him to some brinksmanship with Hatton that had Schaefer growling, his own promoter, Bob Arum, shaking his head and trainer Freddie Roach in the dark until all sides relented on their insistence that the purse be split 50-50 and agreed to a 52-48 breakdown that guarantees Pacquiao $12 million plus a sweetener from Arum that he claims “won’t cost me anything’’ but others whisper is worth $1.5 million extra.
What would have cost them all dearly was if Pacquiao didn’t get the A side of the purse and walked away. Pacquiao’s thinking on this was so simple it’s absurd the numbers crunchers couldn’t see it until the fight was threatened. In his mind he knocked out De La Hoya and his biggest fight on one of the biggest pay-per-view cards in history. Hatton got knocked out by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in his biggest fight. How does that result in a 50-50 purse split?
Read the full thing over at THE SWEET SCIENCE:
Pacquiao wins round one against Hatton @ The Sweet Science
On Saturday night do the smart thing and open two browser windows–in one you can follow our round by round coverage of Affliction: Day of Reckoning, and in the other you can follow The Sweet Science’s coverage of the Antonio Margarito/Shane Mosley fight up the road at The Staples Center:
