Manny Pacquiao accepted Floyd Mayweather‘s Twitter challenge — sort of.
Pacquiao on Thursday issued his first public response to a series of Mayweather tweets calling out Pacquiao and establishing a May 5 date for the long-awaited bout. A blog post on Pacquiao’s official website titled “Official statement to his fans: I will fight May 5” made it seem like all that needed to be done was for both fighters to sign on the dotted lines.
“To all of my fans,” Pacquiao announced, “Mayweather just needs to agree to and accept a 50-percent split, and if he does then the fight will go through. He’s the one who needs to agree.
“He’s the one who has to say yes. The reason is because he talks to a lot of people. He has a lot of representatives. If he takes the fight, he can make $50-$60 million. That’s how much he can make.”
A correction was later issued by the website, retracting the sentence “Manny Pacquiao agrees to fight May 5.”
Pacquiao’s camp has been trying to get an outdoor arena for the fight to create a setting like Mai 20 Stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire for the famed “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974. The bout would almost certainly be the biggest gate draw for boxing in years.
Pacquiao, promoted by Bob Arum, made clear that Mayweather, who represents himself, would have to secure a guaranteed purse for the fight to happen.
“I want to fight him,” Pacquiao said on the website. “This is the fight the world wants. Mayweather wants a guaranteed purse, so what he has to do is get a promoter who can give him the guarantee.”
“I don’t have problems getting a guarantee because I have a promoter who will give me my guaranteed purse. If he gets a guarantee, then we are going to share the revenue on a 50-50 basis.”
