By Jake Donovan

“We'd all have to be morons to not let this happen.”

Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer offered the aforementioned quote when asked about negotiations surrounding the potential superfight between his client, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and current pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao. 

The quote came over a month ago – more specifically, two days after Pacquiao’s 12th round stoppage of Miguel Cotto. The bout produced the most lucrative pay-per-view event of 2009, registering 1.25 million buys and nearly $70 million in PPV revenue.

Even more impressive was that it came two months after the return of Floyd Mayweather Jr, whose comeback fight with Juan Manuel Marquez raked in a whopping $52 million in PPV revenue thanks to its buy rate of just over 1 million units.

The two fights marked the first time in a decade that a single produced two or more events to crack the two-comma barrier. That it involved the two best fighters in the sport, who now campaign at or close enough to the same weight class, made it a no-brainer for 2010 to be all about putting together what figures to be the most lucrative event in boxing history.

Even with the hate-hate relationship that exists between Mayweather (40-0, 25KO) and former promoter (and currently Pacquiao’s promoter) Bob Arum, enough money is on the table to where making this event should be a no-brainer.

Instead, what’s come of the soap opera-like negotiations and its related coverage is that perhaps we’re morons after all.

The superfight that appeared to be so close to becoming official has now hit an unexpected stumbling block. Everyone anticipated the usual issues – purse and revenue splits, weight limit, glove choice, ring size (and in this case, location) and date to be held – to be debated ad nauseam, and neither side disappointed in that regard.

But now, boxing’s equivalent of the Super Bowl could now fall apart over something as trivial – yet necessary – as the method of drug testing.

The latest stall comes over Mayweather’s insistence that both he and Pacquaio (50-3-2, 25KO) undergo Olympic style drug testing as outlined and mandated by the United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA).

The request is unprecedented in professional boxing, but suggested by Mayweather as a “responsibility to subject ourselves to sportsmanship at the highest level” considering the magnitude of this fight, one that would ultimately decide pound-for-pound supremacy.

Olympic style drug testing involves random sampling of the athlete's blood and urine prior to and after the fight. The USADA procedure includes both blood and urine sampling so that all banned substances, some of which do not show up in urine alone, are tested for thoroughly.

There is the suggestion that it’s merely posturing on the Pacquiao side, using this as means to express their disgust over months-long accusation from the Mayweather family, particularly Floyd Sr., of performance enhancing drug use.

Promoter Bob Arum described the stipulation as proof that Mayweather, who spent the first nine-plus years of his career with Top Rank, doesn’t really want to fight Pacquiao, and is merely trying to paint the Filipino as the bad guy, should this event hit the scrap heap.

Where boxing has already shown its ugly side is allowing any of this to become news to begin with, especially considering the wave of momentum the sport has enjoyed as of late. The box-office success and mainstream attention enjoyed by Mayweather-Marquez and Pacquiao-Cotto came during the sport’s traditional stretch run that begins in mid-September and usually tapers off in late November-to-early December.

Over that stretch also came: the opening wave of the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic; Fighter of the Year-worthy campaigns led by Vitali Klitschko and Timothy Bradley; and a final Fight of the Year candidate in Paul Williams’ narrow win over Sergio Martinez.

Strange scoring in more than a few bouts served as the lone black eye in a period that otherwise suggested that it was a great time to be a boxing fan. It would be even better if the biggest fight to be made could be made.

The most recent reports in this saga suggested that such an announcement was forthcoming, even if some of the details wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking. More than a month of intense negotiations had passed before a deal was finally struck every way but officially. All that was left was to nail down a venue and simply to announce the fight to the world soon thereafter.

Yet here we are with less than three months before the targeted fight date of March 13, now wondering if the fight will even happen at all.

The worst case scenario most fans were anticipating was news of the event landing in Las Vegas rather than a more ideal location – most notably Dallas and its newly renovated, state-of-the-art Cowboys Stadium, which could accommodate upwards of 100,000 spectators.

Confining the event to Las Vegas makes for a “been there, done that” feel to an event that its handlers promised to be “larger than life.” With the MGM Grand boasting a seating capacity of 17,000, there now exists the fear of price gouging for the sake of creating the largest live gate in the history of the sport, in addition to rumors of closed circuit viewing to run upwards of a record-high $100.

Despite the bumbling and broken promises, it appeared as recent as Tuesday afternoon that we still at least had a gargantuan event to look forward to, and in the first quarter of 2010.

Now, things are back to square one.

It’s not the first time that either fighter has been involved in high-profile drama. With Pacquiao, there always seems to exist the threat looming overhead of a major fight possibly falling apart.

In fact, it’s occurred in each of his last three events (Cotto, Ricky Hatton and Oscar de la Hoya), but the moral of the story was that each fight actually happened and proved to be far easier for Pacquiao than was the negotiation process, barely losing a round in stopping all three in brutally one-sided fashion.

The one area in which Mayweather has consistently fallen short in recent years is the ability to deliver the fights that boxing fans truly desire. The big event has replaced the big fight in Mayweather’s career, though he usually enjoys the last laugh. The former multi-division world champion remains unbeaten and is by far the biggest draw among current American boxers, having barely broken a sweat in the majority of his 40 wins.

Nobody expects things to be anywhere near as easy for either fighter as has been the case for their past several fights.

Mayweather represents by far the best pure boxer Pacquiao will have ever faced in a career that will be entering its 16th year come January. In Pacquiao, Mayweather will be forced to contend a mix of speed, power and timing like he has never before experienced.

All anyone ever expected, especially over the past few days, was to head into 2010 knowing that the fight that was a no-brainer to put together, would already become a reality.

Instead, boxing once again allows all of its dirty laundry to leak out, with the latest load threatening to serve as the lump of coal nobody looks forward to during the holiday season.

Rather than show the world what boxing is capable of when at our best, we instead reveal to the world that perhaps we are big enough morons to not allow this fight to happen after all. 

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com and an award-winning member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Contact Jake at JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.