By Marcus Richardson: WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweathr Jr. caught a lucky break earlier today when his 90 day jail term was successfully delayed by his attorneys until June 1st instead of starting today. This will enable Mayeather to fight on May 5th as he had been hoping to.
However, Bob Arum, the Top Rank promoter of WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, didn’t show much enthusiasm for making a fight with Mayweather and his No.1 money maker Pacquiao in May. After learning the news about Mayweather receiving a delayed jail term, Arum told Mlive.com “I don’t think it has any impact. No impact at all. Manny isn’t going to be ready to fight until summertime.”
Pacquiao suffered a cut [not a big one] over his right eye from his fight with Juan Manuel Marquez last November. However, the cut didn’t look like an especially deep one and six months is usually the amount of time a cut is needed for it to properly heal. It will be exactly six months in May from the time that Pacquiao suffered the small cut.
It doesn’t sound like Arum is very interested in making the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight. Previously, there was talk of Pacquiao fighting in April or May against one of the following fighters: Timothy Bradley, Miguel Cotto, Lamont Peterson and Juan Manuel Marquez. Arum is going to go ahead and look to match Pacquiao up with one of those guys as he had previously planned instead of put Pacquiao in with Mayweather.
Needless to say, it sure seems as if Arum doesn’t want the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight. I can’t see any reason why the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight can’t be made on May 5th, except that Arum doesn’t want to make the fight. If you look at it from Arum’s perspective, he’s got a fighter in Pacquiao that makes good money fighting his Top Rank fighters and some of older guys.
Pacquiao makes huge money fighting anyone that Arum puts him in with. But if Arum matches him with Mayweather, Pacquiao will likely get dominated and easily beaten by a lopsided decision. Although Pacquiao will get a huge payday in the fight, it might cause his future pay per view earnings to nosedive to a large extent. Who would want to see Pacquiao after gets thrashed by Mayweather? I’m sure some people still would still be interested in paying to see Pacquiao fight, but you got to imagine a lot of people would no longer see him as a PPV worthy fighter.
This is why Arum is probably better off keeping Pacquiao away from Mayweather until it’s like the very end of his career and then Arum can put him in a cash out fight. Look at some of Arum’s fighters. He’s not putting WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in with Sergio Martinez. Arum also isn’t putting his fighter Miguel Cotto in with guys like James Kirkland or Erislandy Lara. We see Cotto fighting against guys like 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman [one of Arum’s fighters], and Antonio Margarito [one of Arum’s fighters].
So this isn’t really surprising that Arum isn’t letting Pacquiao fight Mayweather. He’s just keeping Pacquiao in situations where he can succeed and a Mayweather fight is probably one where Pacquiao would not only fail but look horrible in doing so.