By Mark Vester
HBO's expert analyst Larry Merchant has once again discussed the ongoing saga to make a March super-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. This time Merchant spoke with AOL's Fan House. Merchant has been around a long time and he's seen a lot of tough negotiations for fights. He never saw anything like the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations. He still doesn't fully understand the logic of Mayweather's position to demand random Olympic-style drug tests. That sole demand has destroyed the negotiations and caused Pacquiao to sue Mayweather, Golden Boy Promotions and others.
"I thought that it was gamesmanship because I didn't see anything to be won by this. If you think that he's been using illegal substances, do you want him called out before the fight and revealed and blow the whole deal? I never got the point of all of this," Merchant said.
"The story about somebody saying that somebody came to him and said, 'Can we conceal this?' That's more craziness. I find it hard that anybody would have even thought of that. Once you do this is public. That's, to me, even more strangeness and weirdness."
Merchant thinks there may be a chance that Mayweather is concerned about losing this fight and it's not actually gamesmanship on his part. Mayweather loves being undefeated. It's more important than money to him. Merchant thinks the fear of losing his unbeaten record could be a reason behind his position.
"If it's not gamesmanship, then what they're really saying is that 'Nobody can be as good as Manny Pacquiao unless he's helped by something.' Maybe it reflects on Floyd Mayweather. Even if he believes that he's going to win, maybe he think that there's a chance that he won't," Merchant said.
"Again, from things that he's said in the past, to him, losing is worse than death because he's wrapped his identity up so much in the idea of not losing the fight. He's used that to try to deflect all of the criticism that has come his way from the boxing world and in the boxing media that he has avoided all of the real top welterweights to fight smaller guys. Being undefeated is so important to him, that maybe there's a part of this that expresses or reflects his concern."
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