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By Chris Williams: Whether good or bad, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thinks that the mega fight negotiations between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao will be settled very soon. In an article at the Manila Bulletin, Arum said “We will have a resolution to this within the month.” That doesn’t really say much, because there really isn’t a lot of time for Arum and Pacquiao to wait around if the Mayweather negotiations keep going at a snail’s pace. Arum wants Pacquiao back in the ring by November 13th, and for that to happen he’s going to have get an opponent picked out.
If Mayweather and Pacquiao can’t come to some sort of an agreement, then Arum will have to go with his plan B opponent, who will likely be either WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto or junior middleweight contender Antonio Margarito. Both fighters are in Arum’s Top Rank stable, so it’s going to be a breeze for Arum to set the fights up. Of course, it won’t be exactly interesting for fight fans if Cotto gets selected again, but that’s the way things go. Pacquiao will have his opponent for a fight that will likely take place at the Cowboy Stadium again.
It should bring in at least 50,000 fans, but probably not much more than that because of how horribly one-sided Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto was last year.
The issues rumored to be causing the Mayweather-Pacquiao talks to stall are the blood testing methods for performance enhancing drugs and the purse split. Mayweather is said to want a bigger cut of the pie, whereas Pacquiao is saying he’ll take nothing less than a 50-50 deal with Mayweather. Pacquiao agreed to the blood testing with a 14 day cut off, which is 10 days better than what Pacquiao agreed to last time when he didn’t want testing within 24 days of the fight. Back then, the fight was less complicated to put together, because Mayweather had only fought once since making a comeback from a 2 year retirement.
However, Pacquiao fought Top Rank fighter Joshua Clottey at the Cowboy Stadium, and it did well in putting fans in the seats but it only sold 700 PPV buys, which isn’t considered good numbers compared to some of the fights that Mayweather has taken part in. Mayweather, for his part, got 1.4 million PPV buys in his fight against Shane Mosley on May 1st.
Part of the differences between Mayweather and Pacquiao can be explained by Mayweather having the better known opponent. This is why it seemed like a bad move on Arum’s part to match Pacquiao up with one of his own fighters rather than someone more popular outside of his stable. It would have been okay if Mosley was in Arum’s stable, but he wasn’t. As such, Pacquiao didn’t get nearly as good numbers as Mayweather for his fight with Clottey.
If Cotto ends up being Pacquiao’s opponent for the November fight, it may take some marketing to sell the fight this time, because the fight was so one-sided last time. It might be asking a lot of boxing fans to have to pay $49.95 to watch Pacquiao beat Cotto to a pulp again when they’ve already seen him do that last November. You’d have to really count on boxing fans having amnesia as far as the Cotto-Pacquiao fight is concerned for fans to want to pay big money to see that again. You can do it once, but the second time around the interest might not be there. You could get diminishing returns for this fight.
http://www.************.com/2010/06/...iao-bout-soon/
If Mayweather and Pacquiao can’t come to some sort of an agreement, then Arum will have to go with his plan B opponent, who will likely be either WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto or junior middleweight contender Antonio Margarito. Both fighters are in Arum’s Top Rank stable, so it’s going to be a breeze for Arum to set the fights up. Of course, it won’t be exactly interesting for fight fans if Cotto gets selected again, but that’s the way things go. Pacquiao will have his opponent for a fight that will likely take place at the Cowboy Stadium again.
It should bring in at least 50,000 fans, but probably not much more than that because of how horribly one-sided Pacquiao’s fight with Cotto was last year.
The issues rumored to be causing the Mayweather-Pacquiao talks to stall are the blood testing methods for performance enhancing drugs and the purse split. Mayweather is said to want a bigger cut of the pie, whereas Pacquiao is saying he’ll take nothing less than a 50-50 deal with Mayweather. Pacquiao agreed to the blood testing with a 14 day cut off, which is 10 days better than what Pacquiao agreed to last time when he didn’t want testing within 24 days of the fight. Back then, the fight was less complicated to put together, because Mayweather had only fought once since making a comeback from a 2 year retirement.
However, Pacquiao fought Top Rank fighter Joshua Clottey at the Cowboy Stadium, and it did well in putting fans in the seats but it only sold 700 PPV buys, which isn’t considered good numbers compared to some of the fights that Mayweather has taken part in. Mayweather, for his part, got 1.4 million PPV buys in his fight against Shane Mosley on May 1st.
Part of the differences between Mayweather and Pacquiao can be explained by Mayweather having the better known opponent. This is why it seemed like a bad move on Arum’s part to match Pacquiao up with one of his own fighters rather than someone more popular outside of his stable. It would have been okay if Mosley was in Arum’s stable, but he wasn’t. As such, Pacquiao didn’t get nearly as good numbers as Mayweather for his fight with Clottey.
If Cotto ends up being Pacquiao’s opponent for the November fight, it may take some marketing to sell the fight this time, because the fight was so one-sided last time. It might be asking a lot of boxing fans to have to pay $49.95 to watch Pacquiao beat Cotto to a pulp again when they’ve already seen him do that last November. You’d have to really count on boxing fans having amnesia as far as the Cotto-Pacquiao fight is concerned for fans to want to pay big money to see that again. You can do it once, but the second time around the interest might not be there. You could get diminishing returns for this fight.
http://www.************.com/2010/06/...iao-bout-soon/
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