By Mark Vester

Top Rank's Bob Arum is not confident that Floyd Mayweather Jr. will accept a fight with Manny Pacquiao. He will try his best to put the fight together. HBO will push to make the fight happen by next May. Even with such a demand, Arum has doubts in his mind. He is convinced that Mayweather ducked fights with Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito in order to protect his undefeated record. Arum has always said that Mayweather cares more about his undefeated record than he does about money.

"You have to understand Mayweather's psyche," Arum told Reuters. "Psychologically he may not be prepared to do this fight. Now this is me being an amateur psychologist, but Mayweather is so tied up with the fact that nobody has beaten him, that he has a zero on his record, that I don't know if he would be willing to go into the ring with anybody that could jeopardise that zero. He is afraid, terrified of losing that zero."

"That's why he's ducked Mosley, Margarito and Cotto, and the question is will he duck Manny Pacquiao because he's so afraid of losing that zero? Boxing is on such a roll now, not to do this fight would slow down considerably the momentum that boxing has, and that would be wrong."

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