Schaefer: Mayweather-Pacquiao fight won’t happen in 2012

Pacquiao in 2012. Schaefer says the fight definitely won’t happen this year, and he feels it likely won’t happen until Pacquiao is down to his final fight before he retires.

Schaefer told the Telegraph.co.uk “It will happen but not his year. Probably when Pacquiao is ready to retire and has run out of other options.”

I agree. The Mayweather-Pacquiao probably won’t get made until Pacquiao is on the verge of retirement and/or he starts taking losses to Timothy Bradley and some of the other fighters in his promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank boxing stable. At that point, there will likely be a huge rush to make the fight Mayweather fight to get the payday fight while there’s still a glimmer of hope to get it. Once Pacquiao starts getting beaten, you can expect his pay-per-view numbers to drop off. I don’t know how he’ll still be pushed as a PPV attraction once he starts losing but I expect Arum to keep having his fights as PPV even if he loses five or more times before he retires.

Frankly, I doubt Pacquiao will stick around for long if he takes more than one loss. I see his pride being too much for him to stick around once he’s losing.

Arum said something about Pacquiao retiring in 2013, but I don’t see that happening. If Pacquiao gets by Timothy Bradley in June and keeps beating the Top Rank stable fighters that Arum has been putting him in with, I can see Pacquiao sticking around as long as 2015 to 2017, milking his WBO title, making a lot of money against the guys that Arum finds for him. A fight with Mayweather won’t happen unless Mayweather is good with sticking around for another three to four years until he’s 38 or 39, at which point he can get the fight with Pacquiao right before he retires. By then, few boxing fans will even care about the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but at least the Pacquiao gravy train was allowed to continue another three to four years longer than it would have had Pacquiao been matched against Mayweather to begin with.