By World Boxing Council

The fight the world has been waiting to see, the fight that the world wants to see. The WBC fully supports the promotion of this fight which will certainly break all existing records in many areas.

The WBC has been supportive and has provided all flexibility for the fight to take place and hereby confirms that we will continue to do so. Manny Pacquiao was ranked the #1 mandatory challenger [to WBC champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.] when he returned after his [2012] loss to [Juan Manuel] Marquez, unfortunately a different path was taken [when he challenged Tim Bradley for the WBO title], but today there is another opportunity for this fight to happen.

We encourage all parties to sit down and make it happen - just as they did for Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson, which seemed impossible to be put together, but they all sat down and made it happen. That fight was aired on pay-per-view on all platforms via Showtime and HBO.