by David P. Greisman

We would prefer for the stories to be the fights. After all, the premise behind boxing is simple but beautiful: two men at conflict for 12 rounds or less, using hits and wits as they vie for victory.

But sometimes circumstances dictate that we focus elsewhere. What happens outside of those 400 square feet of elevated canvas can be of just as much import.

What happens outside of the ring can be downright ridiculous.

And so the saga of whether Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. will fight has taken turns both maddening and bizarre.

And so the sudden substitution of Samuel Peter in place of Alexander Povetkin as an opponent for Wladimir Klitschko comes with several explanations.

And so Danny Green’s one-punch knockout of Paul Briggs – from a glancing jab – raises questions of outside impropriety, ranging from the scandalous (Briggs taking a dive in a fixed fight) to the dangerous (Briggs going down because he never should’ve been allowed in the ring to begin with).

And when all of this happens in the span of days?

We get what might have been the most ridiculous week in boxing. With very little of it involving actual boxing.

Had events – and egos – dictated otherwise, the story this week would have been a fight between the two best fighters, pound-for-pound, of the past decade: Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

We were told that negotiations – with HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg serving as an intermediary between Bob Arum (Pacquiao’s promoter) and Al Haymon (Mayweather’s adviser) – had produced an agreement, that all that was needed was Mayweather’s signature.

Then we were told there was a deadline.

Then we were told the deadline had passed for exclusive negotiations, but that the fight was still possible should Mayweather want it.

Then we were told that Mayweather didn’t want it.

And then we were told that there were never negotiations.

Such was the claim from Mayweather’s manager, Leonard Ellerbe, who said this in a press release e-mailed to writers and websites: “[N]o negotiations have ever taken place, nor was there ever a deal agreed upon by Team Mayweather or Floyd Mayweather to fight Manny Pacquiao on November 13. Either Ross Greenburg or Bob Arum is not telling the truth, but history tells us who is lying.”

The not-so-subtle insinuation was that Arum – he of the infamous quote: “Yesterday I was lying. Today I’m telling the truth.” – was the person who was being deceitful.

David Mayo of The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press, who has long covered the Mayweathers, said last week that the negotiations were anything but, that Arum dictated his terms to Greenburg, who in turn got in touch with the Mayweather camp, which never responded. Mayo cites a conversation with Ellerbe in May as informing him ahead of time as to how the negotiations would probably go – but he does not cite a source for his concluding that this is truly how the talks actually went.

Other reporters, meanwhile, cite inside but anonymous sources as saying that there were indeed actual negotiations. But beyond that, there were indications of negotiations, as countless writers have pointed out: a gag order in which the status of the negotiations was not discussed, a stream of “No comment” responses not just from Arum, but from Greenburg and from executives with Golden Boy Promotions, which handles Mayweather’s fights.

Many of those “No comment” responses came from Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy. And yet, last week, Schaefer told BoxingScene’s own Robert Morales: “You read the statement from Leonard, and I stand behind that statement, and I have nothing to add.”

No explanation as to why nobody on the Golden Boy or Mayweather end never said, in the past two months, that there were no negotiations.

For people who are accusing Arum of not telling the truth, Schaefer and Team Mayweather certainly aren’t being forthcoming themselves.

The same can be said for the promoters behind Alexander Povetkin, the heavyweight contender who was to have challenged the champion, Wladimir Klitschko, on Sept. 11 but who has now been replaced with Samuel Peter.

Povetkin won the right to fight Klitschko all the way back in January 2008, winning a four-man elimination tournament by beating Chris Byrd and Eddie Chambers. Povetkin was to have faced Klitschko in December 2008 but had to pull out with a bizarre injury suffered in training camp: He tore a ligament in his left foot after tripping on a tree root while running through the woods.

Since then, he has waited for his shot. And waited. And now he will wait some more.

Povetkin failed to show for a press conference last week promoting the fight. That put the gears in motion for Klitschko to replace him. That, and the fact that Povetkin hadn’t yet signed his contract, according to BoxingScene.com correspondent Ruslan Chikov.

From what Povetkin’s promoters told Russian media, they were unhappy with various facets of his contract, including mandatory press conferences and penalties for missing them; certain expenses not being paid by Klitschko’s promotional company, which was to have put on the fight; and Povetkin having to use a certain brand of gloves.

But, as Dan Rafael of ESPN.com put it, “[T]here has been a difference of opinion within the Povetkin camp about the fight; his promoters at Sauerland Event have pushed for the bout, but Povetkin’s management and trainer, Teddy Atlas, wanted to delay it, believing the fighter wasn’t ready to face the No. 1 heavyweight in the world.”

Atlas, who is a color commentator on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights,” told Rafael that he was passing up more than $200,000 in pay – 10 percent of Povetkin’s earnings for the fight – in favor of delaying Povetkin’s challenge of Klitschko.

“I think it’s my responsibility to do more than just navigate a fighter … I think he needs more experience,” Atlas said on last week’s episode of Friday Night Fights. “I’d like him to get more seasoning.”

Klitschko will now be facing Peter, the next highest fighter in the International Boxing Federation’s rankings. Povetkin doesn’t have another fight scheduled and will presumably once again need to earn a mandatory shot at the championship.

The disconnect between Povetkin’s promoters and those entrusted with guiding his career didn’t just relate to a debate over putting him in with Klitschko before he was ready. It also meant that Povetkin has basically sat on his mandatory title shot since 2008 for nothing, keeping busy with four fights but without facing any opponents who could make him better.

At least Povetkin is physically capable of being in the ring. There is question over whether Paul Briggs should’ve been allowed to fight at all last week.

Briggs faced Danny Green in a cruiserweight bout. The fight lasted less than half a minute.

Briggs started the bout by throwing a left hook, which Green blocked. He later landed a jab to the body. That was it from him. Green soon sent out a pair of jabs, one of them bouncing at an angle off the top of Briggs’ head. Briggs went down to the canvas on all fours, briefly attempting to rise before falling forward. The fight was over.

It was over before it began.

Some felt the bout’s end was predetermined, concluding that Briggs had taken a dive and thrown the fight. The Australian newspaper reported that there was a flurry of bets just before the fight putting money on Green winning in the first round.

Others felt the bout’s end was predetermined in that Briggs was in no condition to fight Green.

“Danny Green vs. Briggs will be hard to watch, having followed Briggs’ career and knowing he is past it and only going to take a beating,” Australian heavyweight Mark de Mori said on Twitter the day of the fight.

The bout was even moved from New South Wales – which, according to The Australian, declined to host the bout “because of concerns over Briggs’s health and his three-and-a-half year absence from the ring” – to Western Australia.

After the fight, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Briggs had been showing signs of neurological problems in the weeks before the fight, “forgetting at which gymnasium he was training and mistaking strangers’ cars for his own. His conditioning was so poor that he took one body shot in sparring and vomited.”

It is possible gamblers knew of Briggs’ poor condition and capitalized with their late bets. It is also plausible that Briggs took a dive. Either way, it is questionable that the fight was allowed to go on at all. That the fight was held at all is why the story of Green-Briggs has gone from the strange events in the ring to the events outside of it.

We would prefer for the stories to be the fights, of course, for the stories to be tales of pitched battles and brilliant performances. But when the ridiculous happens – or when the ridiculous keeps fights from happening, as with Pacquiao-Mayweather and Klitschko-Povetkin – we must turn discussion to the dubious, our conversation to the controversial.

The 10 Count

1.  We’ve waited close to a year for Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. to fight. Instead we are probably getting Pacquiao against Antonio Margarito.

We’ve waited more than two years for Wladimir Klitschko to face Alexander Povetkin. Instead, we’re getting Klitschko in a rematch with Samuel Peter.

2.  That said, while Manny Pacquiao has to be the heavy favorite to beat Margarito, one cannot completely discount Margarito’s chances of winning.

Margarito would be the tallest opponent Pacquiao has ever faced, someone who has consistently overcome disadvantages in hand speed and foot speed, using pressure and timing to win.

It’s amazing that it’s now so easy to imagine Pacquiao and Margarito sharing the same ring, never mind how logical it is now to consider Pacquiao the favorite. When Pacquiao was fighting at featherweight and junior lightweight, he seemed too small to face lightweights like Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo. And Corrales and Castillo proved to be undersized welterweights themselves.

Still, there’s a reason we so often the repeat the cliché of “Styles make fights.” Pacquiao has the style to give Margarito fits, taking advantage of the astronomical difference in speed to strafe Margarito much in the same way he did Oscar De La Hoya. And the Antonio Margarito of 2010 does not at all resemble the Antonio Margarito vintage 2008 that beat Miguel Cotto.

3.  Similarly, Wladimir Klitschko has to be the overwhelming favorite to beat Samuel Peter – but it’s not impossible to imagine Peter giving Klitschko some frightening moments yet again, is it?

The Wladimir Klitschko of 2010 is undefeated in six years, having racked up 12 straight victories, and he is far more confident of himself and far more in control of the ring action than he was in September 2005, when he was just two wins removed from his technical knockout loss to Lamon Brewster.

Peter is nowhere near as raw as he was back then. But we’ve also seen since then that he can be knocked down (three times in 2007 against Jameel McCline), can be pot-shotted by a big man from a distance (by Vitali Klitschko in 2008) and can look downright disinterested and discouraged (against Eddie Chambers in 2009).

But in Peter’s last fight, he was down to 237.5 pounds from his career high of 265 against Chambers (and 253.5 against Vitali Klitschko, and 250 against McCline). If he’s not only in good physical shape, but mentally fired up, too, he could test Klitschko’s ring generalship skills.

Peter needs to be hungry, literally and figuratively. I still see Klitschko out-boxing Peter more easily than he did five years ago.

4.  Returning to the Danny Green-Paul Briggs scandal, there’s this concerning the International Boxing Organization, a sanctioning body that has sought recognition not just as a “major” sanctioning body, but as one better than the other four major sanctioning bodies. (Green holds the IBO cruiserweight belt.)

From The Sydney Mourning Herald: “The IBO has requested an investigation from the West Australian authority. The IBO’s vice president [of the Asia/Pacific region], Phil Austin, said the body had sanctioned the contest as a world-title bout due to ‘Briggs’s reputation’ and after being assured by Briggs’s camp via Green that he was in sound condition during training.”

Yes, sanction a cruiserweight title fight with your challenger being someone who never competed at a high level above light heavyweight, who hadn’t defeated an opponent of note since 2004, and who hadn’t fought at all since February 2007. There’s your reputation. As for his condition? Ask his opponent.

“Any time something like this happens, I think we can expect some heat, that goes without saying,” Austin told the Australian Associated Press. “But you will find there have been shorter fights for other organization’s titles.”

I’ve held off on criticizing the IBO for some time. I haven’t accepted it as the fifth major sanctioning body, but I wasn’t going to be an outspoken naysayer anymore.

But…

If you’re going to push yourself as better than the rest, you cannot be as bad as them. The list of opponents Green has faced at cruiserweight, from his title-winning bout to his defenses, has been nearly as bad as BJ Flores’ recent run of opponents.

5. Returning to a topic I tackled a little bit back: pay-per-view piracy using Internet streams.

The UFC has subpoenaed two well-known streaming websites, seeking the identities of people who illegally loaded feeds of pay-per-view cards for others to see. And by others, I mean tens of thousands.

One person’s feed of UFC 108 in January had more than 36,000 people watching it online, according to a press release. That same person put up multiple feeds of UFC 110 in February that had more than 78,000 people watching.

Say each of those people had spent $45 on the pay-per-view? That’s $1.62 million in lost revenue for UFC 108 and $3.51 million in lost revenue for UFC 110.

My best guess is that most of these viewers would fall under the category of lost revenue, that these aren’t necessarily people who wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in the UFC if they couldn’t see it for free. Rather, the increasing numbers of people watching illegal streams would seem to indicate that more and more people are turning to pirating the pay-per-views instead of purchasing them.

6.  Teddy Atlas, ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights,” July 16: “I heard the possibility, a little bird told me something … that maybe Michael Grant is out [of a fight with Tomasz Adamek].”

Dan Rafael, in a chat on ESPN.com, July 23: “Teddy was incorrect. According to Main Events, the promoter of the fight, Adamek-Grant is on and not in any trouble, nor has it been.”

This is just one example of why ESPN needs to keep Atlas on a close leash when it comes to his “breaking news” that originates with questionable anonymous sources and little birds. Atlas is not a reporter. What he is is a boxing expert who has the ability to be a pretty good analyst (as he showed, for example, throughout the July 23 episode of “Friday Night Fights”) but who also has a tendency to dominate the commentary, repeating himself endlessly.

7.  This past week’s episode of “Friday Night Fights” was held outside at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino in Lemoore, Calif., about 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles. As noted several times during the broadcast, it was hot outside – VERY hot. 110 degrees in the sunlight hot.

Why, then, was the fight held outside? How many people would pay to watch boxing in triple digit heat? Wasn’t there a ballroom inside to which the card could’ve been relocated?

8.  Then again, what money was lost in ticket revenue Friday night was probably more than made up for in sales of cold water and cold beer.

9.  On a related note, having returned to the Washington, D.C., area smack in the middle of a heat wave, I now firmly understand why Paul Williams trains down here: no problem sweating down to the welterweight limit.

10.  “Ricky Hatton To Fight On? Renews Boxing License,” reads the headline on BoxingScene.com.

Well, folks, I think we’ve got David Haye’s next opponent…

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com