by Michael Collins: Bob Arum will get the chance to use the large outdoor 40,000 seat arena he’s having built on the Las Vegas strip by putting his top money fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao in there with fellow Top Rank fighter WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in a fight that reportedly will be taking place on June 9th in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to news from writer Michael Marley at examiner.com.
Apparently, Arum and Floyd Mayweather Jr’s management team haven’t been negotiating, as Arum says he’s had no conversations with Mayweather representatives Leonard Ellberbe or Al Haymon. Arum says he’ll look to make the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight in November but he’d like to get the hard part out of the way before then by negotiating purse split and other issues now.
Marley interviewed Arum and got the impression that Cotto, 31, will be the one that ends up facing Pacquiao in what would be a rematch of their 2009. In that fight, Cotto was soundly beaten by Pacquiao in a 12th round TKO loss. The fight wasn’t competitive but it made good money on PPV, hence we’re seeing a rematch.
The Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito fight also made good money on PPV, but I’m hoping Arum can resist the urge to trot Margarito back out for a second go round with Pacquiao just because it can make money.
In fairness to Arum, it’s likely that a lot of casual boxing fans have completely forgotten how badly Cotto was beaten by Pacquiao, and they might gladly scoop up tickets and purchase the fight on PPV in droves.
That would make Arum very happy, but I don’t know that it would be a good fight for hardcore boxing fans that are aware how one-sided the 2009 Cotto-Pacquiao fight was. It was a slaughter from start to finish.
Arum commented on Mayweather not agreeing to a 50-50 purse split deal with Pacquiao, saying to the examiner.com “Mayweather said he won’t agree to a 50-50 split with Manny. Now that’s something blocking the fight, something we won’t agree to.”
Arum would like the Pacquiao-Mayweather deal to be pretty much done right now so that boxing fans see Mayweather’s May 5th fight and Pacquiao’s June 9th fights as bouts that lead to a November fight between them. Arum thinks that would really help bring in fans for May and June fights if they knew the next fight in November would be the mega bout.