BoxRec

man wrote:gentlemen,

i do not want to get into my suspicion who is to
blame for all this ridiculous negotiation stunt you
people have set out to display for years now.

you are a disgrace to the sport you are working in.
you have been preventing the biggest fight of our
time from happening. it is the same as if johnson
had not fought jeffries, willard refused dempsey,
louis found a good excuse to avoid schmelling and
ali's team could not have agreed with neither frazier
or foreman on terms for their fights.

i thought nothing could disgust me more than the
alphabet belt organisations, but you made it possible.
though, let me exclude one person from my criticism.
manny pacquiao himself, because his record shows
he never ducked anyone, not for a millisecond and i
have no reason whatsoever to believe that he does
now. but all you others negotiators, promotors,
tv presidents, what you have been representing is a
rotten new world of money showing its muscle over
dignity and honest work. you are presiding over your
kingdoms in the promoting-management-televising
sphere and you show all of us down here how the
world is run these days.

in a hundred years from now people will look up
places like this one here and see the record of fighters.
your name, mister manager/promoter, will be looong
forgotten. people will just see two names next to each
other and ask themselves ... "why?". oh, sorry, dempsey
could not fight tunney, because their managers could
not agree on filming rights. hagler-hearns? too bad,
didn't happen, they could not agree on the purse split.

sorry, i can't help one more thing. floyd, you were the
reason years ago with your blood test request. maybe
you were right, maybe you were wrong, but i feel like
it is indisputable that once you were the reason this
fight didn't happen. before i say the following, i have
to state that i truly admire your game and how you
kept improving even in your thirties. BUT, sir, do not
even dare to use something like GOAT, or whatever
you invented to call the best pound for pound fighter
of all time, for yourself. don't you dare put yourself up
there with the sugar ray robinsons, muhammad alis,
sugar ray leonards, roberto durans, joe louis' or any
other of the legends of this sport, who DID go out and
fought the best, quite often under difficult circumstances,
and would not even contemplate on coming up with all
these little itches and twitches that could make them
avoid someone.

if you keep your "0" without fighting manny pacquiao,
you will impress your juvenile audience, but real fans
of the sport will not fall for it and history will give you
one label "the ducking ATG". imagine ali was twenty
when marciano still fought and rocky had refused him.
you think "49-0" would mean the same? no, sir, the 49
shrink into nothingness, as unfair as that might be, if
the "0" is bought by ducking. but maybe i am unfair to
you and maybe it is indeed haymon or arum or HBO's
greed or showtime's mismanagement, what do i know?

but, all of you, save me the crap of how difficult this
is to negotiate and get all details right. just, save me
that CRAP.

man