By Ronnie Nathanielsz
 
HBO senior vice president Mark Taffet yesterday made it clear that the world’s leading boxing network “entered into an agreement with Top Rank and Bob Arum” for the pay-per-view distribution of the showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales last March 19 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and that HBO “took no risks, gave no PPV guarantees to the promoters and the promoters took all the risks.” At the same time Taffet said “our contract was with Top Rank and Bob Arum, not with Murad Muhammad” and that he had “no idea of any share for Manny Pacquiao.” He said “promoters make deals with one another” and HBO didn’t know the details of such agreements.
 
Manila Standard Today tried to contact Arum at his HBO office in Las Vegas about the raging controversy over the share allegedly due Pacquiao from PPV income but Arum was not in his office. A message was left on an answering machine but as of press time we had received no response.
 
In an overseas telephone conversation with Manila Standard Today, Taffet revealed that HBO handled the distribution of the fight coverage in the US market and took what Taffet termed “a fee for distribution services” and would “collect incomes and give it to Top Rank”.Taffet also disclosed that HBO “provided an advance to Top Rank after the fight to cover any risk of a shortfall” in pay-per-view because the promoters had committed to pay Morales and Pacquiao a fixed purse for the fight. Morales was reportedly getting $2.5 million and Pacquiao $1.75 million while Murad Muhammad revealed the advance paid to Top Rank was $2.7 million. Taffet said “if Murad tells you how much it was, its correct” because he knows.”
 
Taffet indicated that since the PPV “significantly exceeded our expectations” the advance would be “paid back” after HBO “goes out and collects” which he said “would take a little while since we don’t have the actual numbers in hand right now. We project numbers and update figures every month and report to Top Rank.” The top HBO executive who handles the PPV arm of TVKO stressed “this deal was typical of every deal we’ve done for fights.” Taffet branded Arum as some kind of a genius because he didn’t ask for a big advance which would have entitled HBO to a “higher percentage” of the income. Instead Arum chose to get a comparatively small advance and as a result Taffet said “most of the money goes to him.”
 
Taffet admitted that HBO “didn’t expect the fight to exceed the numbers” of the Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera fight for the ages last November and that when the figures came in “we were pleasantly surprised. The fight performed superbly.” He said the reason for the somewhat conservative assessment of the PPV buys was because “ we had no history with Manny (Pacquiao) on PPV. It could be a great fight in the ring but we didn’t know it will be a mega-fight on PPV.” The Barrera-Morales fight did 325,000 buys while the Pacquiao-Morales did 350,000 according to initial estimates by HBO.
 
Pacquiao and his new management team as well as trainer Freddie Roach have been claiming on Philippine TV/radio and print media that Pacquiao was entitled to 40 percent of PPV income and that Murad "stole" the money due to Pacquiao even as the Filipino southpaw whose career was built by Murad and business manager Rod Nazario said he would sue Murad and that his new manager Shelly Finkel was hiring another lawyer to handle the case.