If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum gets his way boxing fans could be seeing a fight between Arum’s fighter Manny Pacquiao and WBA/WBA welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr in Macao, China in 2015. Arum likes the idea of having the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight staged in Macao for some reason.
It could have something to do with a huge site fee that Arum would likely get for staging the fight in Macao, as well as the opportunity to help open up China for pay-per-view. The chances of Mayweather agreeing to fight Pacquiao right now are slim for the early part of 2015, and you’d have to think much, much slimmer that Mayweather ever agree to face Pacquiao in Macao. With Arum already talking Macao before Mayweather has even showed any intereest at all in fighting Pacquiao, it seems like Arum is sabotaging his own efforts. Why talk Macao if you’re really interested in seeing your fighter Pacquiao fight Mayweather? This reminds me of the time Arum was talking about an outdoor stadium needing to be built in order to house more fans for a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.
There’s an upside for Pacquiao to fight in Macao due to the decreased taxes from the money he’d make for a Mayweather fight, but there wouldn’t be such an advantage for Mayweather. He’d still be taxed the same.
“Of course it could be held in Macau [at the CotaiArena].Top Rank would be amenable to Macau but whether Mayweather would agree to have it in Macau that’s something I rather doubt because Mayweather is not the most sophisticated guy,” said Arum.
I’m not sure that it has anything to do with sophistication as to why Mayweather wouldn’t want to fight in Macao. Why would Mayweather volunteer to fight in that venue when he wouldn’t get anything out of it? Pacquiao would likely be a huge, huge crowd favorite in Macao, given that he’s fought in that location before in the last. Mayweather would be the newbie and would likely have very few fans on his side.
“In his mind, fighting Manny in Macau would be like fighting on Manny’s home court,” Arum said.
Pacquiao already has a huge fan base in Macao, so why wouldn’t he be seen as fighting on his own home court in a fight in Macao? The Philippines is much closer to Macao than the United States is to Macao.
Instead of Arum worrying about Mayweather fighting in Macao, he should just be hoping that Mayweather will even say yes to a fight against Pacquiao at all, period, because right now it’s not looking like we’re going to see that happening. Mayweather recently quoted as saying that even if there were a fight between him and Pacquiao, it would have to be televised on Showtime pay-per-view and it would have to be run by Mayweather Promotions. This means that Arum wouldn’t be calling the shots. Pacquiao would be the B-side and would have to agree to Mayweather’s wishes or else there would be no fight.
