By Rob Smith: Former WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao has already spoken by saying that he’d like to fight a rematch against Tim Bradley, who recently defeated the Filipino star by a controversial 12 round split decision. However, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum isn’t so thrilled at letting his cash cow fighter take a second bite out of the Bradley apple, because Arum doesn’t see it as a fight that will interest the boxing public. He likes the idea of setting Pacquaio up with another in house Top Rank fighter in Juan Manuel Marquez instead.
The fight would likely make more money than a Bradly rematch, but it would likely be a riskier bout because Marquez fought a lot better than Bradley did last November in his fight against Pacquiao, but came up a loser. An overwhelming amount of people saw Marquez as having won that fight, but there wasn’t a big stink brought up as far as investigations as five-men panels by the WBO.
Arum told Yahoo Sports “Obviously, he’s [Pacquiao] the boss, he’s the fighter, and to the extent possible, I’ll do what he says…I have to talk to him, though, and make certain he understands the ramifications, if he is aware of the public’s perception is. I would have to have, if I were going to do a rematch, an investigation, which is ongoing with the attorney general’s office.”
An ongoing investigation? For what? Pacquiao lost to Bradley. Why would Arum waste time with an investigation when it was clear as day that Pacquiao couldn’t fight the full three minutes of every round. Instead of talking about investigations, Arum should be looking at trying to help Pacquiao get a better conditioning trainer and/or trainer period that can teach him to use his right hand, because he didn’t hardly use it during the Bradley fight. Pacquiao’s problems were his lack of conditioning and his limited skills. He’s not going to win many fights only putting out effort in the last seconds of each round.
Arum sounds as if he’s going to try and talk Pacquiao out of fighting Bradley again. By putting him in with Marquez it’s not going to make things any better for the Filipino. If you remember, Pacquiao won a controversial 12 round decision over Marquez last November. It’s not going to make things any better by merely shifting the players and hoping for a better result. If Pacquiao can’t beat a 39-year-old Marquez and the light hitting Bradley, then he needs to start thinking about retirement. Arum should be trying to cash out as fast as possible before Pacquiao takes anymore defeats and his paydays take a huge dump. One or two more defeats and Pacquiao will be lucky if he can get a 70-30 deal with Mayweather.