By Jason Kim: Top Rank appears to be having fun with the mid-July deadline that Bob Arum has given for Floyd Mayweather Jr. to decide whether he’ll accept the contract proposal that Arum sent over to Mayweather last week for a fight against Manny Pacquiao on November 13th. At the Top Rank website there’s a “Money” time clock counting down how much time Mayweather has before the July 15th deadline on Friday.
For Mayweather to speak up an save the fight with Pacquiao, he’s got until midnight on Friday to take the fight. If not, then Arum is prepared to move on and match Pacquiao up against either Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto next. Arum isn’t saying which fighter will end up getting the lucky Pacquiao bout, as he’s kept it pretty quiet about who will be the one.
Margarito has the bad luck of not having a boxing license to fight in the United States, and that may be reason enough for Arum not to select him as the next choice for Pacquiao. Arum was hoping to put Pacquiao’s next fight in the large Cowboy Stadium on November 13th, but that will only be possible if he selects Cotto, because Margarito probably won’t have his boxing license back by November unless Arum moves quickly and can help him attain it from the California Athletic Commission.
Arum seems to be pretty much set on having Pacquiao fight only Cotto or Margarito next. Arum unfortunately doesn’t have any other semi-big stars near that weight class. He took a chance by matching Joshua Clottey, one of his less popular fighters in his stable, in the last fight with Pacquiao but that didn’t turn out too well in terms of pay-per-view buys and selling tickets. It could be the same again if Margarito is selected, because right now he’s not huge star in the U.S. and there’s been a lot of fallout from his hand wrap incident and subsequent loss of his boxing license from his fight against Shane Mosley last year.
Comments are closed.