Arum: The taxes are too high in U.S for Pacquiao to fight there

By ESB - 01/22/2013 - Comments

By Rob Smith: Manny Pacquiao may have fought for the last time in the United States last December in his 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is railing against the high taxes in the United States now, which Arum feels is making it impossible for Manny – and other foreign fighters – to compete in the United States.

Arum said to espn.co.uk “These big foreign fighters don’t want to fight in the United States. He [Pacquiao] doesn’t want to fight in the United States. Home come? Because he’d have to give close to 40% to the government…It’s getting ridiculous.”

Arum’s bellyaching about the U.S tax system isn’t going to change a thing, so it’s unclear what he hopes to gain from talking about it so much. It’s there and going to be there whether he likes it or not. You can understand Arum wanting to get around the U.S taxes because the government is probably taking a pretty big bite out of Pacquiao, Marquez and Arum’s pay for these fights.

However, the foreign fighters will have to fight United States if they want to become popular here. That’s part of the deal. HBO and Showtime aren’t going to be televising a lot of the foreign fighters if they’re not interested in coming to the U.S to fight because it’s too much work and too expensive to fly the HBO crew to Asia or Europe to televise fighters that don’t want to come to the U.S to fight for fear of being taxed. As such, if the foreign fighters don’t come to the U.S to fight then that’s on them. They lose out.

Manny can get away with not fighting in the U.S now because he’s been fighting in the U.S for a solid four years. So Arum can stage Pacquiao’s fights in Mexico or Asia and still count on HBO or Showtime to be willing to still televise it on pay per view. But Arum probably won’t be able to do that with other foreign fighters if they haven’t been fighting in the U.S.

If Arum wants his foreign fighters to become popular, then they’re going to have to come to the U.S to fight because they’re going to build up enough of a following by just fighting on Pacquiao’s undercards once or twice a year from Mexico or wherever Pacquiao chooses to fight.