by Ronnie Nathanielsz
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has ripped the contract submitted by Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer, offering “Fighter of the Year” Nonito “The Filipino Flash” Donaire $3 million dollars to fight WBC super bantamweight champion Abner Mares in June. The signed contract was sent to Arum’s lawyer David Marroso [ Click Here To Read The Full Contract ].
Arum told BoxingScene.com/Manila Standard:
“Nonito knows –and he’s nice boy and realizes it – that because of HBO he has been able to fight four times on television last year and that enabled him to become ‘Fighter of the Year’. It would be the essence of disloyalty on his part and on my part if we allowed a fight with Nonito and Mares to be on Showtime.”
Arum also pointed that Schaefer knows that - “June is not a possible date for Nonito because (his wife) Rachel is scheduled to have a baby in June” and he made it very clear weeks ago that June-July were out.
The astute Top Rank promoter cited a provision in the contract which he said:
"[If the fight doesn’t push through] for any reason, there’s no liability and he walks away. Look what they snuck in there. In other words he promises $3 million [and] goes down that road and then he can’t get that from a network and he realizes the fight isn’t worth $4 or $5 million [and] he just walks away with no liability!”
In an earlier article on BoxingScene , Mares said he was willing to fight Donaire on April 13th and was also disappointing that Donaire and his promoter never sent a counter-offer to Golden Boy's contract.
The Top Rank promoter disclosed:
“We have a commitment on April 13 to HBO which we are going to honor and we are going to make an announcement on the fight shortly, probably by the end of the week.”
Several weeks ago Arum told us Donaire’s opponent would be WBA champion Guillermo Rigondeaux, the Olympic two-time gold medalist.
“[Donaire] is going to make his biggest purse in that fight and so we go on from there.”
Donaire received a $1 million dollar purse for his last fight in which he scored a 3rd round knockout of four division world champion, Jorge “Traviseo” Arce of Mexico last December 15 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
