By Michael Collins: It’s always interesting to see Bob Arum come up with excuses when his feet are held to the fire about why doesn’t he match some of his fighters such as Manny Pacquiao and/or Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. against more dangerous opposition that could potentially knock them out or badly beat them.
In a recent interview at esnewsreporting.com, Arum’s excuse for not letting Pacquiao fight Sergio Martinez at a 150 pound catchweight was as follows: “I’m not interested in Sergio Martinez. Sergio Martinez should have his promoter put him on pay per view to see how he draws. The public doesn’t know who Sergio Martinez is.”
That’s pretty funny. How can the boxing public not know who Martinez is when HBO has been showing his fights for the past couple of years? How could you miss Martinez’s fights against Arum’s fighter Kelly Pavlik, where Martinez gave Pavlik a beating in taking his WBC and WBO belts last year? How about Martinez’s fight against Kermit Cintron, where Martinez got ripped off after knocking Cintron out but having Cintron argue that he was knocked down by a headbutt and not a straight left hand.
Martinez also had two exciting fights against Paul Williams, Sergiy Dzinziruk and Darren Barker and Arum is saying the boxing public doesn’t know who Martinez is? That’s a pretty lame excuse if you ask me. I’d rather Arum just say Martinez is too dangerous for Pacquiao. That would sound better rather than dumping on Martinez by claiming he’s an unknown.
If Arum really cared about how popular a fighter is before matching him with Pacquiao then why did he match Pacquiao with Joshua Clottey? How about Antonio Margarito? Martinez is clearly better known than Clottey and he’s arguably better respected than Margarito was and yet Arum still matched him with Pacquiao. Obviously, Margarito wasn’t seen as a threat to Pacquiao due to his lack of hand speed and his coming off of surgery.
In the same interview, Arum said “Brandon Rios a terrific fighter. Everyone wants to see him. I look at him as a guy that’s going to be one of the top, top attractions in 2012, and he’s going to get some monster fights lined up with very high visibility. Eventually in 2013, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him with Pacquiao.”
So Rios is more popular than Martinez? Fort those who don’t know, Rios fights for Arum with Top Rank, so it would be an in house fight. Martinez doesn’t fight for Arum, although I still don’t think Arum would ever match him with Pacquiao even if he did promote the guy because of Martinez’s one-punch knockout power. It just kind of bothers me to hear the excuses Arum sometimes makes why he doesn’t match his fighters against guys that have a chance to beat them.
Martinez fights at middleweight but he was a light middleweight up until 2009. He can’t get a fight with Arum’s fighter Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who holds the WBC belt. Is Martinez not well known enough to get that fight? The WBC said that Martinez was supposed to be next for Chavez Jr. but Martinez is still not getting that fight. Chavez Jr. instead will be fighting Marco Antonio Rubio next month on February 4th, while Martinez has to settle for facing Matthew Macklin on March 17th.