By Michael Collins: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum could match Manny Pacquiao up in a second with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 5th if he wanted to, but Arum doesn’t want to do that he wants to have the fight make every penny it can make by waiting for an outside temporary arena is built.
Unfortunately it won’t be built in time for May 5th, the date that Mayeather agreed with Las Vegas judge Melissa Saragosa that he would be fighting on. For some reason Arum can’t speed up the construction of the outside arena for it to be built in time.
Perhaps the workers are already working top speed? Who knows? But whatever the case, it won’t be built in time for Mayweather’s next scheduled fight date. This means that Pacquiao will be matched against four possible choices and the fight will be staged in the 40,000 seat arena that Arum had originally hoped to put Mayweather in.
The size of the arena might be overkill unless Arum chooses a popular fighter like Juan Manuel Marquez to fight Pacquiao. Miguel Cotto, one of the other candidates, isn’t hugely popular in Nevada compared to the way he is on the East coast, and it could be too few fans for all of those seats that Arum is having built. Hopefully Arum is getting a good deal out of the construction in case the crowd disappoints.
Arum is counting on Mayweather agreeing to fight Pacquiao in November instead, as by then the issues about the stadium, Pacquiao’s slow healing cut, and Mayweather’s boxing license won’t be an issue, as long as Arum doesn’t come up with some new problems holding his fighter Pacquiao back.
I don’t know if Mayweather is going to feel happy about being told what’s going to happen by Arum. He might be busy in November doing own thing. Would bother Arum? I don’t know that it will, because he’ll still have three of the four opponents that don’t make the cut for his June 9th fight available to him.