Why Mayweather and Pacquiao will probably never fight:

A lot of boxing writers are still saying that Mayweather and Pacquiao are all but guaranteed to fight one another. The money they believe will be stuffed inside the mattress at the end of the fight is just too big for Mayweather and Pacquiao to ignore for longer than a year or two. The argument is a good one but only valid if the huge flood of money is really there.

First, let's be totally honest about the degree to which these guys need each other. A lot of people, especially among Mayweather's fans, will say this is out of left field but Manny simply doesn't need Floyd for any reason but the money and his legacy. The unpleasant fact here is that Pacquiao could retire today and his legacy would be secure. Even before moving up in weight to win notoriety as the 'best fighter in the world, pound for pound', Pacquiao won titles at 112 and 122 lbs. Then he all but cleaned out the 130lb division in dramatic fashion with only a single draw (Juan Manuel Marquez, followed by a split decision win in the rematch) and a single loss (Erik Morales, twice avenged by KO) against his record. In doing so he gained near undisputed recognition as 130lb champ. There was a day when most fighters Manny's size and age would have retired after the split decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez. Then, against Ricky Hatton, he won the undisputed championship of the world at 140lbs. Two undisputed championships and a plethora of alphabet titles won in big fights are a pretty convincing legacy. If the biggest consideration was firming up that legacy before retirement then Juan Manuel Marquez would do so more than Floyd. The draw and win with JMM were both controversial. It has been all but explicitly stated that JMM would drop in his tracks before he got a fight if he tried to hold his breath.

So, legacy-wise, Pacquiao doesn't need Mayweather anywhere near as much as we want him to need Mayweather. Mayweather might need Pacquiao pretty badly but he (and others, such Yahoo's boxing man Kevin Iole) doesn't think so. Mayweather felt he'd proven he was better than Pacquiao when he beat Marquez and a lot of writers gave him credit for his defeat of Shane Mosley that someone reading the discussion of Pacquiao-Mosley might consider past his due. History shows us that if Mayweather is convinced he is the best then he does not care on whit for what the rest of us think. So Mayweather probably doesn't feel he needs Pacquiao at all either.

That brings us back to the money.

Pacquiao doesn't need the money from a fight with Mayweather at all. No, you didn't read that wrong. It is simply the truth. Pacquiao is an A-side attraction who can fill Texas Stadium fighting the likes of Josh Clottey. All he needs is a one-to-two year diet of B-sides just as good as Antonio Margarito and no better. It's arguable that his share of the purse for his upcoming fight with Shane Mosley and his past purses for Ricky Hatton and Antonio Margarito were in the same league was what he'd be looking at for a fight with Mayweather. Which means that, if money is the only reason to make the fight, he really has no reason to fight Mayweather at all. One can make the argument, Mayweather being Mayweather, that unless something fundamentally changes inside Mayweather's brain that purse could be smaller. Can anyone see Floyd settling for less than 'his rightful share' of the purse?

The core argument for the fight is that the tv money will be so much better that it can't not happen... but Manny Pacquiao has been fighting exclusively on PPV for awhile now and has proven his drawing power even when the B-side had zero. What was the last Mayweather fight that pulled down big PPV numbers because of Floyd's name and only Floyd's name. It's very possible that we're seriously overestimating the amount of money he adds to either the live or PPV gate. Maybe Bob Arum agrees and this is the big reason for his willingness to flout fan desires on this subject: he doesn't think the money and splitting the empty mattress with Golden Boy justifies the expense of the promotion when he can keep the empty mattress every time Manny fights another guy in Arum's stable.

So how badly does Mayweather need the money? Does he need it enough to make Manny Pacquiao the kind of offer he can't refuse?

Ultimately the numbers suggest that the fight happens, if it happens, because Mayweather really needs the money and does whatever it takes to land the fight. That's not one hundred percent impossible but it ain't likely. Mayweather's ego and self-image weigh heavily against him doing so. He's always taken the path of least resistance in the past, up-to-and-including his decisions to fight Juan Manueal Marquez and Shane Mosley instead of Pacquiao. There has been some speculation that Mayweather is waiting for the moment when Pacquiao is the path of least resistance. The trouble with that is that Mayweather is a year older than Pacquiao and the reflexes on which he relies go away before punching power.

For those who have raised this Leonard-Hagler parallel, Leonard was two years younger than Hagler and controversial scoring was more of a factor than the dissipation of Hagler's talents. Don't forget how razor thin the margin of victory was in that fight. Don't forget how Leonard's own abilities tanked after it.

Don't forget that it still would not have happened if Marvelous Marvin Hagler had not been willing to concede every disputed point in the fight contract to Leonard. Manny no longer has any reason to do so. Does Floyd?

Mayweather-Pacquiao is the most important fight of the first couple years of the new decade. It's a shame that it won't happen. Floyd was probably to blame for the first failure and Bob Arum was probably to blame for the second. The fact that the fight won't happen at all now is equally Manny's fault and Arum's. The only person who can make it happen is Floyd.

If he gets out of legal trouble and stays out of jail. Let's not forget that.

There are no big fights on HBO or Showtime until the end of the month but there will be fights on ESPN on the 7th, 14th, and 28th. I'll be watching and scoring them all. During the same span there is one international fight (Beibut Shumenov vs Jurgen Braehmer)that I will watch and score if I can find it on the internet during or after the fact. There is a second international card (headlined by Sebastian Sylvester and Steve Cunningham against European ham-and-eggers) I will watch if I my fannish devotion to Cunningham overpowers my disinterest in the no-hopers fighting the headliners.

So keep reading even if Bradley-Alexander isn't until the last Saturday of the month. There will be something here every week, at least.