By Lem Satterfield
Last Friday, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum held a late night conference call with the press to discuss the details behind the ongoing negotiations to make a November fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. According to Arum, the negotiations had been ongoing for the past two months, with HBO President of Sports, Ross Greenburg, acting as the intermediary between himself and Mayweather's manager, Al Haymon.
On Monday, Mayweather's adviser, Leonard Ellerbe, issued a statement denying the existence of the negotiations and said "either Ross Greenburg or Bob Arum is not telling the truth but history tells us who is lying."
Initially, Arum thought Ellerbe's statement was a joke. Arum doesn't know the reasoning behind Ellerbe's statement. Greenburg called Arum on Monday to throw water on the fire before it got out of control between the two sides. Arum doesn't plan to lose his head - because he feels the Mayweather camp has gone crazy.
"This is Alice In Wonderland Time. This is preposterous. It's almost like dealing with people who have lost their minds. It's totally bizarre. I mean, how do you answer to something like that? Well, Richard Schaefer has said for seven weeks that there was a gag order in place when he was asked about the negotiations," Arum said. "If there are no negotiations, then why or how is there a gag order and where did it come from?"
"What Ross [Greenburg] told me is that he said, 'take it easy.' He said, 'don't go crazy. Take it easy,' and 'we're still trying to make the fight.' That's what he said to me, word, for word. I guess that he thought like I would go off at this kind of stupid thing."
Lem Satterfield is the boxing editor at AOL FanHouse and the news editor at BoxingScene.com. To read more from Lem Satterfield, go to AOL FanHouse by Clicking Here.
