By Rick Reeno
The idea of Manny Pacquiao fighting either Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto on November 13, leaves a bad taste in the mouth of promoter Dan Goossen. For the last two weeks, Goossen has been trying to get Paul Williams in position to fight Pacquiao in November. Williams has been campaigning at junior middleweight and middleweight in his last five fights, but plans to move back to welterweight before the end of the year.
Williams has almost no chance to fight Pacquiao in November. Goossen knows the probability is low, and at this point he would rather see Pacquiao fight anyone other than Cotto or Margarito.
"Let him go fight Tim Bradley. Let him go fight Andre Berto. Of course I would rather him fight Paul Williams, but nobody wants to see him fight Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto. Margarito doesn't deserve a fight with Pacquiao. He didn't look good in his last fight and he can't get a license to fight in the United States. Cotto is one-fight removed from taking a beating from Pacquiao. Nobody wants to see that again," Goossen told BoxingScene.com.
"Bob wants to keep it in-house. Whether it's heads or tails, Bob wins. The loser in all of this is Pacquiao because he's taking a fight the fans don't want to see. I guarantee a fight with Berto or Bradley or Paul Williams would do 20 to 30% better [on pay-per-view] than Cotto or Margarito."
Goossen had some choice words for Arum in response to certain comments that were made during last Friday's late night conference call. Arum told media members that Williams and Bradley were not considerations for Pacquiao's next fight because they were not properly promoted.
"We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building up our fighters, publicizing them, so that they are pay-per-view attractions. [And] losing money on a lot of events but we make them pay-per-view attractions. These other promoters, they don't really promote their fighters. They take money from HBO or Showtime. They take money from a little Indian casino and they think they are doing the kid a big service. I'm not going to let them free-ride on the work that we've done," Arum said during the call.
Goossen doesn't buy the comments, which he views as an excuse to avoid non-Top Rank promoted fighters.
"We've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on our fighters and we've also taken losses. We had to beat Bob in court to get Paul Williams a fight with Antonio Margarito. Margarito received $2 million dollars to fight Paul. That was the biggest payday of his career and more than he ever made [at that time] under Bob. Does he really think I made that money back from HBO? When Floyd Mayweather left Bob, and I promoted his next two fights [Carlos Baldomir and Sharmba Mitchell], and one of them being a pay-per-view, Floyd made $14 million dollars and that was more than he got from Bob for any of his fights," Goossen.