Sugar Ray: Mayweather vs Pacman inevitable

MANILA, Philippines - It’s a toss-up between two pound-for-pound champions who just can’t get it done in the ring.

Sugar Ray Leonard, one of the great boxers of all time, said it would be too close to call if Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. ever get to face each other.

“It’s a toss-up, a pick-’em fight,” Leonard, who with Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns formed of the Fab Four of the 1980s, told the Grand Rapids Press.

The big question, however, is if the fight that the entire planet wants to see would ever happen.

There’s a big disagreement regarding the drug-testing procedure, and it’s so big that the fight that should decide who the greatest boxer of this era truly is might never take place.

Pacquiao is against Mayweather’s call for random blood testing Olympic-style, one that would require probably a dozen tests in the months, weeks, days or hours before the fight.

Pacquiao said Mayweather knows how he hates the drawing of blood close to a fight, and the Filipino icon said it’s Mayweather’s way of dodging the fight, his only way out of it.

On the other side of the coin, Mayweather’s father said the fight would never ever happen because Pacquiao wouldn’t take the test. All along, he had doubts if Pacquiao is into performance-enhancing drugs.

But Leonard insists that the fight should happen, probably with or without the blood tests.

“The fight has to happen,” Leonard told David Mayo of the Grand Rapids Press, adding that it would be a big disappointment if Pacquiao and Mayweather end up hanging up their gloves without fighting each other.

“They both are letting people call them pound-for-pound. They both are considered pound-for-pound right now. They’ve got to fight each other to prove who’s the best, pound-for-pound – fact.

“It’s about the money, because boxing’s a business. But also, if you want to be considered one of those guys, you’ve got to put up. That’s a fight that appears to be inevitable at some point in time, hopefully sooner than later,” Leonard said.

Sooner perhaps.