By Michael Collins: It’s looking more and more like Bob Arum and his fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao will choose to skip the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight in May for an easy fight against one of the four fighters – Timothy Bradley, Lamont Peterson, Juan Manuel Marquez and Miguel Cotto – that has been mentioned as possible opponents for the 33-year-old Pacquiao to fight.
Arum doesn’t like the timing for the Mayweather fight; doesn’t like the venue; doesn’t like that he can’t have time to market the fight, and probably doesn’t like the idea of having his cash cow fighter Pacquiao losing to Mayweather. The thing is the boxing public can clearly see that it’s not Mayweather that’s holding this up this time. In the past, they were able to paint the picture that Mayweather was asking unreasonable requests by asking for random blood tests for performance enhancing drugs. This time Pacquiao and Arum just don’t seem to want the fight.
So how will boxing fans see Pacquiao after this? Will they see him as someone satisfied with the careful matchmaking that his promoter Arum has done for him all these years, seemingly keeping him away from guys that might beat him like Mayweather and Sergio Martinez. Will the boxing public care about any of this and just see it as one of those things that happen in the sport.
How about the casual boxing fans? Will they even know that Arum and Pacquiao chose not to fight Mayweather in order to face a softer opponent? If you look around in the internet boxing forums on the net you’ll notice that boxing fans overwhelmingly are seeing this as a situation where Arum and Pacquiao are ducking Mayweather. That can’t be good for Pacquiao’s fan base to be seen as ducking a fight that would make him $50 million.