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Arum: "SHOWTIME Has Upperhand For Cotto-Margarito II"
Initially, Arum said whichever company got the rights to Pacquiao-Marquez III would also get the Dec. 3 Miguel Cotto-Antonio Margarito rematch, another major fight. HBO PPV did their initial fight in 2008 while Showtime PPV did Cotto's win against Ricardo Mayorga in March.
Arum said he eventually changed his mind about making the two fights a package deal.
"Showtime still has a position on the Cotto fight because they did the last one, so Monday we'll start talking to them," Arum said. "When Todd and I had further discussions and we realized that it wasn't the most advantageous thing to do, to make a package deal. Showtime did such a great job for us on the last Pacquiao fight and it would be important and good for the sport for Showtime to stay involved in these major pay-per-view fights. So if Showtime meets certain proposals that we're going to make, and we get the support we need from them, then it behooves everybody to go with them. That way we keep more people and en****** involved and it's great for the sport.
"I don't want to go back to the situation where there is one entity doing all the major pay-per-views and that entity does the same thing over and over and gets into this narrow box, which I felt the pay-per-views were in because they had been successful and we kept repeating the same thing over and over again. That is not a way to grow a sport. You grow it by being innovative and having competition and new ideas."
http://espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id...arquez-rematch
Arum said he eventually changed his mind about making the two fights a package deal.
"Showtime still has a position on the Cotto fight because they did the last one, so Monday we'll start talking to them," Arum said. "When Todd and I had further discussions and we realized that it wasn't the most advantageous thing to do, to make a package deal. Showtime did such a great job for us on the last Pacquiao fight and it would be important and good for the sport for Showtime to stay involved in these major pay-per-view fights. So if Showtime meets certain proposals that we're going to make, and we get the support we need from them, then it behooves everybody to go with them. That way we keep more people and en****** involved and it's great for the sport.
"I don't want to go back to the situation where there is one entity doing all the major pay-per-views and that entity does the same thing over and over and gets into this narrow box, which I felt the pay-per-views were in because they had been successful and we kept repeating the same thing over and over again. That is not a way to grow a sport. You grow it by being innovative and having competition and new ideas."
http://espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id...arquez-rematch
The article also details some specifics of the Pacquiao-Marquez deal.
I just hope if they do a Fight Camp, that they give some shine to Donaire and Gamboa. Those guys are studs and deserve to be exposed to larger audiences. Arum is right though, keeping SHOW/CBS in the PPV/big fight game is better for the sport as a whole. They wouldn't have gotten the Time Warner package for Pac-Marquez if SHOW/CBS hadn't rolled out the red carpet for Pac-Mosley, and now Cotto-Margarito/Donaire/Gamboa might reap the benefits as well. A bit of competition from SHOW/CBS will only force HBO to step their game up, as is evidenced by the recent news.
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