By Lem Satterfield
Less than 24-hours are left for Floyd Mayweather Jr. to accept a proposal to fight WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao on November 13 in Las Vegas. Both parties have given Mayweather until the end of today, midnight Pacific time, to sign his name to a deal - or Pacquiao will move foward with another opponent.
The two options, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, are going to take place in the junior middleweight division. Pacquiao will either fight Cotto for his WBA title, or Margarito for the vacant WBC title. Top Rank and Pacquiao's team are looking at two possible locations to host his next fight, Abu Dhabi or Mexico.
When Top Rank CEO Bob Arum reached a deal with Golden Boy Promotions, negotiating on behalf of Mayweather, there was always a question as to whether or not Mayweather had planned to fight again in 2010. Arum also sees an issue with Mayweather's uncle/trainer, Roger Mayweather, possibly being sent to prison for an assault charge. Roger has a trial scheduled in the month of August. A prison stint would leave Floyd without his usual trainer for the biggest fight of his career.
"It was always a question whether Mayweather wanted to fight this year or next year. It has always been a question of that," said Arum. "That's what I kept telling everybody. So all that we said two weeks ago was that hey, 'We'll give you a length of time.'"
"We understand that there are problems as far as Roger is concerned. So they will have until midnight on Friday. If we don't hear favorably from him at the time, which I don't think that we will, then we move to somebody else. That's all. It's not adversarial. In other words, in my opinion, there are reasonable grounds for him not to want to fight this year. And those grounds essentially relate to Roger."
Pacquiao's adviser, Michael Koncz, doesn't see a financial issue as being the problem for Mayweather's likely decision to wait until 2011. Koncz agrees with Arum's point of view, believing that it might be something related to his training camp.
"On Floyd's end, I can't speak for him, but it's my belief that it's not the economics of the fight. I think that there are other issues. Maybe that his corner might be altered somewhat because his uncle has some problems that have to do with the training, but nobody has told me that. I'm just speculating," said Koncz.
"Who knows? Maybe everything isn't clicking in his camp right now and he doesn't want to jeopardize a fight with Manny because everything is not clicking. When you're going to be going into the toughest fight of your life, you don't want to change anything or compromise what helped to bring you to the level of success that you've achieved."
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 .
