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According to ESPN’s Dan Rafael, Team Mayweather (through Golden Boy’s Richard Schaefer) has backed off insisting the USADA do blood tests prior to a proposed fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr., providing random testing is administered until an agreed upon date prior to the fight.

Despite all the bahumbug holiday news, the super fight isn’t dead just yet. While you will continue to hear doom and gloom for some time yet, the money on the table for both Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. to fight each other March 13 continues to keep talks pushing forward. Saturday afternoon ESPN’s Dan Rafael reported a conversation he had with Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer shows Team Mayweather has eased up on their earlier insistence that only the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency preform random “Performance Enhancing Drug” tests prior to the proposed historic fight.

“We are OK to move off USADA,” Schaefer, who is representing Mayweather, told ESPN.com. “What we’re saying, and what is important to us, is four things — that the tests be random, that they include blood and urine and the time frame, meaning when do you stop the tests before the fight but know they will still be effective. Three of them we have agreed on — random, blood and urine. So now it is a matter of the two sides working out the specifics of the cutoff date to assure it will still be effective.”


While this sounds like promising news upon first glance, a sour sounding Bob Arum kept things melancholy Saturday, telling ESPN he’s essentially washing his hands of the issue, and he will now only have Pacquiao do what the Nevada State Athletic Commission insists.

“Our position is that since the fight would be in Nevada, let [the Mayweather side] make any petition it wants to the commission,” Arum told Rafael. “We wash our hands of it. If the commission wants to take blood, fine.”

The news seemed to agitate Schaefer, who pointed out that negotiations are a two way street and Arum is appearing increasingly standoffish.

“The pressure is on Pacquiao,” Schaefer said. “We are making compromises. It’s a two-way street. If they back off again, I will shut off my phone and spend the rest of the Christmas and New Year’s time with my family, and good luck to all of these fools. I don’t know how to explain it other than maybe Pacquiao doesn’t want the Mayweather fight.”

If left up to the Nevada State Athletic Commission as per Arum’s comments, it appears on the surface that (as is their policy) no blood tests would be done for PEDs, as they only test urine.

However in the recent weeks Keith Kizer (the executive director of the Nevada commission) has gone on record stating they would welcome third party blood testing if it’s requested.

With Arum stating they will leave it in the hands of the NSAC, it leaves things at an impasse, as it would appear Top Rank are not requesting the blood tests.

It is currently unclear if just a request from the Mayweather camp will have the NSAC enlist a third party to do blood testing or not.

Thankfully, Bob Arum’s cohort Todd duBoef (president of Top Rank Promotions) is currently hard at work speaking with Bruce Binkow of Golden Boy Promotions, and the two are trying to iron out a compromise that will satisfy both parties on the increasingly volatile issue of the PED testing.

This leaves the hot heads Arum and Schaefer in the background for now where their counterproductive rhetoric will hopefully take a back seat.

Fight Fans can only hope that duBoef and Binkow can let cooler heads prevail, and that at the end of the day, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. can pipe up and find some common ground on which to compromise to move this fight forward. Not just for their own pocket books and aspirations of personal glory, but for the sake of boing lovers everywhere.

Stay tuned as there is surely more to come. And no matter what you read and how grim it sounds, just remember all that money sitting on the table that disappears if either fighter looks to another opponent.