To those that haven’t been paying attention, the boxing world is afire over Floyd Mayweather’s silence in regards to a proposed mega fight with Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, set a deadline for Midnight Saturday before his company Top Rank would begin negotiating with two of their in house fighters–Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito–on Pacquiao’s behalf.

Mayweather has been uncharacteristically silent during this second round of negotiations. The first round earlier in the year was nixed when the two parties couldn’t come to terms over drug testing protocols. Mayweather demanded random, Olympic-style testing performed by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, while Pacquiao claimed that blood tests too close to fight night would weaken him, even going far enough to blame his last defeat, to Erik Morales in 2005, on an 11th hour blood test.

Let me preface the rest of the post by saying I’m not a big fan of either fighter.

I admire both of them for embodying so much that is great about the sport of boxing in completely different ways. Pacquiao is a fearless throwback to legends of the sport like Robert Duran and Henry Armstrong who scaled weight classes, fighting, and beating, the best fighters in several divisions by going right after them. Mayweather is a pure tactician who frustrates opponents inside the ring with the same defensive tricks that Wilfred Benitez and Pernell Whitaker used so well, while infuriating them outside the ring with a sense of showmanship and grandeur that many fighters seem to have forgotten is an integral part of fight promotion and potentially a greater factor in Mayweather’s fame than his vaunted talents. That being said, I don’t consider myself a fan of either one, I admire and appreciate their skills, and I watch their fights, but my emotional connection to each doesn’t go beyond that.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the majority of boxing fans, who have drawn fierce and tense battle lines over fight since it was first proposed after Pacquiao’s win over Oscar De La Hoya. The then-retired Mayweather had bowed out as the Pound-for-Pound best in Boxing, now Manny Pacquiao had taken his place, and continued to cement his spot at the top of the heap with knockouts of Ricky Hatton, David Diaz and Miguel Cotto. When Floyd returned from his brief retirement, the boxing world clamoured for a fight between the number one and number two fighters in the world. There are several factors that make the match-up one of the most intriguing of the modern era; first you’ve got the fact that no on-paper analysis could put one fighter over the other in any ranking, the contrast in in-ring styles and of course the contrast in their personae outside the ring.

The contentiousness of the match-up has resulted in some over the top reactions from both fighters’ fan bases. Mayweather fans claim that Pacquiao is on steroids and that he’s afraid to face Floyd on an even playing field. They also claim that Manny’s place at the top of many Pound-for-Pound lists is unwarranted since Floyd has returned and continued his winning ways in two bouts against future First-Ballot Hall-of-Famers Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez, both of whom were beaten in impressive fashion and made to look so amateurish that casual fans couldn’t recognize them for the elite fighters that they are. On the flip side, Pacquiao’s fans claim that anyone who disputes their man’s pound-for-pound and sometimes all-time great status is a racist, and that Mayweather is using the steroid issue to dodge a dangerous fighter who poses a legitimate threat to his much-coveted “0.”

Now that Mayweather seems to be responsible for the breakdown of the second round of negotiations, the Pacquiao supporters have been burning up the internet claiming that he is afraid of many, with many so-called analysts calling him an outright coward. Now I’m not a fan of Floyd’s, but I just can’t accept that. There are several reasons Floyd might have been silent during the negotiations–a media gag order agreed upon by both sides probably being the most important–but I honestly don’t think that Floyd has much to fear from Manny as a fighter. Stylistically, it’s a horrible match-up for Pacquiao, and a great one for Mayweather, who has beaten all types of fighters, big-punchers, pressure fighters, boxers, and so on without so much as losing a round.

In my opinion, there are two reasons for Floyd’s indecisiveness on the fight. First his uncle and trainer Roger Mayweather is awaiting sentencing for a domestic incident, which could see him removed from Floyd’s corner for any fights in the near future. Facing your toughest opponent in the highest profile fight of your career without the most consistent presence in your corner might be too daunting of a gamble for “Money May.” The importance of fighter-trainer relationships cannot be overstated, and the Mayweather duo have one of the most fruitful and successful partnerships in the history of boxing. If the shoe was on the other foot, and Pacquiao had to sign on to a fight not knowing if Freddie Roach would be in his corner, I highly doubt he would commit.

On the other hand, I feel that there is a good chance that Mayweather is balking at the 50-50 split that Arum and co had proposed. Last year Mayweather was second only to Tiger Woods in Forbes’ list of the highest earning athletes in the world. Ranking higher than Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Lance Armstrong and Pacquiao, Mayweather is one of the biggest commodities in sports, and the bare numbers combined with his massive ego would probably result in him wanting a bigger share of the pot than Pacquiao. As the face of boxing, he might deserve it, but considering how contentious the negotiations have been up to this point, I doubt he’ll receive it. Considering that he allowed Oscar De La Hoya to walk away with the lion’s share of the money from their fight, he might feel that win, lose or draw, he deserves his come up. Despite his superior performance in the ring, De La Hoya walked away the financial winner because of his team’s superior performance at the negotiating table, and that is a lesson that Mayweather might be remembering as reports of his cowardice run rampant in the blogosphere.

At the end of the day, I think what frustrates the fans most is that Mayweather realises that he doesn’t need the money, he doesn’t need our respect and he certainly doesn’t need Pacquiao, but unfortunately, we as fight fans need this fight.