The 32-year-old American was undoubtedly the pound-for-pound king before his retirement but Pacquiao’s continued success as he rises up the weights now has him firmly in the argument with opinion now split on who is the better fighter.
Mayweather insisted he was the better man earlier this week, and he said Pacquiao was afraid to face him.
“You have to understand Mayweather’s psyche. Psychologically he may not be prepared to do this fight,” said Arum in an interview with Planet-f1.com.
“Now this is me being an amateur psychologist, but Mayweather is so tied up with the fact that nobody has beaten him, that he has a zero on his record, I don’t know if he would be willing to go into the ring with anybody that could jeopardize that zero.”
“He is afraid, terrified of losing that zero,” he added. “That’s why he’s ducked (Shane) Mosley, (Antonio) Margarito and (Miguel) Cotto, and the question is will he duck Manny Pacquiao because he’s so afraid of losing that zero.”
Arum’s goading is aimed at getting Mayweather into the ring, and American TV executives believe a super fight at welterweight next May is on the cards.
For his part, Pacquiao told Mayweather that he should be the one challenging for a fight.
“We are not pushing the fight. He should be the first to challenge me, after all I got a higher pay-per-view from my fight,” Pacquiao said.
This was in response to Mayweather’s call a couple of days ago that if the Filipino icon wants to fight him, Pacquiao just needs to “step to the plate.”
Regardless of who challenges who, the fight must surely go ahead with the expected huge revenue if nothing else forcing the two men to get into the ring together.
No comments:
Post a Comment