Pac-man falls into the Oscar trap

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By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports

Beating Oscar De La Hoya will do wonders for a fighter’s career, but there often is a malaise that comes with a victory over the Golden Boy.

De La Hoya has long been boxing’s most popular fighter and biggest attraction. Yet Felix Trinidad didn’t usurp him after his controversial 1999 win over De La Hoya in a battle between then unbeaten welterweight champions.

Nor did Shane Mosley, who defeated De La Hoya twice.

And one can almost guarantee that neither will Manny Pacquiao.

That hasn’t stopped any of those men, though, from believing they’d inherited De La Hoya’s mantle as boxing’s biggest seller and making financial demands to boot.

Pacquiao, whose dominant effort in an eighth-round stoppage of De La Hoya on May 6 made him a unanimous pick as the No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer in the world in the Yahoo! Sports rankings, is the latest to fall victim to it.

Promoters Bob Arum of Top Rank and Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy had all but wrapped up a scintillating bout between Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton for May 2 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

But Pacquiao, who is in the Philippines and hasn’t spoken to Arum, has begun to make noises about not taking the fight unless the purse split is made greater in his favor.

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Arum and Schaefer worked a 50-50 purse split, a reasonable deal given the huge money Hatton brings to the table from British television.

But Pacquiao suddenly began saying he wouldn’t take the fight without at least a 60-40 edge in his favor.

Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, was in an ornery mood on Thursday and not of a mind to speak much about Pacquiao’s reasoning.

He reasons – and probably correctly so – that Pacquiao will ultimately realize he’s making a mistake and agree to the lucrative deal that was offered.

It’s not as if Hatton has no other options, however, so there is some urgency for Arum to get Pacquiao’s signature on a contract.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on with him, but it will get done, I guarantee you,” Arum said. “The only way it gets aborted is if Hatton gets tired of waiting and takes another deal.”

Trinidad blew an eight-figure payday in 2000 when he declined to accept a rematch over his insistence that the deal terms be flipped from the first fight. Their 1999 fight set what was then a record for pay-per-view sales for a non-heavyweight bout, hitting 1.4 million, a figure that wasn’t surpassed until 2007, when De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather sold 2.4 million for their super welterweight bout.

Mosley made a similar miscalculation when he turned down a third fight with De La Hoya.

Pacquiao only need to look at those two men and the extraordinary amounts of money they let slither through their fingers because they reasoned that a win over De La Hoya made them as popular and big of an attraction as the Golden Boy.

Pacquiao is one of the sport’s most popular fighters, but despite the one-sided victory he scored, he’s still not De La Hoya.

The quicker he realizes that, the better it will be for boxing and, more importantly, his bottom line.

With that, here are the results of the January Yahoo! poll. Given that none of the top 10 fighters were in action since the last rankings were released, it’s not surprising that there were no changes from December.

I agree with what Kevin is saying here, I think has more to do with the people in Manny's inner circle whispering in his ear.

Discuss.