By Edward Chaykovsky

Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum would love to stage not one, but two fights next year between welterweight champions Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

Arum told The San Francisco Chronicle that both networks, HBO and Showtime, are interested in staging the fight early next year. Mayweather has an exclusive multi-fight deal with Showtime and Pacquiao fights under HBO. But Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, believes the fight is big enough where both networks will work together side by side - as they did several years ago for the heavyweight super-fight  between Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis.

“Both networks want this fight to happen,” Arum said to the paper. “All signs seem to point to the fight happening early next year.”

Both fighters have defenses coming up. Mayweather defends his WBC/WBA titles against Marcos Maidana on September 13 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and Pacquiao defends against Chris Algieri on November 22 in Macau.

“There is a sell-by date, where it becomes (after that) ‘Who cares?’ It has to happen by the first six months of next year,” Arum said. “And if it happens, there should be a provision with a different percentage for the rematch. So that the winner is rewarded for winning the fight. I would love to see these guys fight twice next year.”