Whether they fight or not, Pacquiao and Mayweather will be forever linked together. It seems this week has not gone well for either for them.
PHOTO BY Gene Blevins/Hogan Photos
Attorneys have to do what their clients want them to do, even if though they know the likelihood of their request being granted is slim. Floyd Mayweather recently petitioned the State of Nevada to release him on house arrest or at the very least into the general population of the Las Vegas prison.
His lawyers had to have known that request would have been denied, but since their client was willing to pay, they made the motion.
According to ESPN, Mayweather's lawyers claimed that he was dehydrating behind bars, and that he was unable to work-out and eat the necessary calories to stay in top shape as a professional boxer. He allegedly was not eating the food that was made available to him or drinking enough water, since he has grown accustomed to drinking bottled water and high quality food, the type you wouldn't expect to see in prison.
Mayweather's lawyers even had his personal physician, Dr. Robert Voy, examine him. They informed the court that Dr. Voy determined that Mayweather was consuming fewer than 800 calories a day, and that his future career may be in jeopardy due to his physical detoriation.
"I am concerned about Floyd withdrawing, developing anger he cannot dissipate through the usual means of dedicated exercise and training," Voy wrote in an affidavit. "Boxing has been Mr. Mayweather's life since he was a young man and we need champions of this type to continue to their natural retirement and hopefully their contributions to society thereafter."
Mayweather's legal team must have remembered that the last time they made an economic impact argument in court, the court granted their motion and postponed Mayweather's reporting date until after his scheduled May 5th fight.
It was a good argument. If you keep my client in jail, you hurt his ability to make the State of Nevada money in the future.
However, to the surprise of nobody, that argument didn't work and his motion was denied.
The Judge noted that it was Floyd's choice to eat or not to eat the food made available to him in prison, and that he has sufficient space in his jail to work out.
Keeping Floyd out of the general population was a decision made by the jail officials, and likely a wise one. It is difficult to keep an eye on everyone in house in general population, and impossible to guarantee the safety of a high profile celebrity such as Floyd. Someone may have attempted an assault on the 147 pound Mayweather just to make a name for themselves.
If Mayweather was to be granted house arrest, that decision would have been made before his reporting date. If the court had granted Mayweather's motion in the middle of his sentence, the court likely would have seen a deluge of motions from inmates seeking their release claiming physical and mental ailments due to their incarceration.
Prosecutor Lisa Luzaich summed it up best when she said, "It's jail....Where did he think he was going? The Four Seasons?"
However, Mayweather's rival Manny Pacquiao didn't exactly have the best week either.
Besides losing his belt in a fight that most are calling a robbery, the official numbers for his gate of his fight with Timothy Bradley was released. In comparison to Pacquiao's and Mayweather's other recent fights, they are not good.
According to Keith Kizer of the Nevada Athletic Commission, Pacquiao and Bradley did $8.96 million at the gate, with 13,229 tickets sold, 925 tickets comped, and 2,070 unsold.
Top Rank has refused to enter into an agreement with Golden Boy and Floyd Mayweather for a Pacquiao fight if those terms were anything less than 50/50.
Mayweather's last fight with Miguel Cotto did a gate of $12,000,150. Certainly Pacquiao's less than stellar gate with Bradley could be explained because of Bradley lack in popularity before Saturday's fight, but not selling over 2,000 tickets had to have been unexpected.
The pay per view buy rates for Pacquiao vs. Bradley have not been reported yet.
When Mayweather is released from prison his bargaining position in the Pacquiao negotiation will have improved. If other professional boxers, such as Mike Tyson, are able to continue their career after prison, so should Floyd Mayweather.