By Chris Williams: ESPN writer Dan Rafael believes that WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, was never really interested in matching his cash cow fighter Pacquiao up with unbeaten WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and the recent 90-day jail sentence that Mayweather received gave Arum the excuse not to match Pacquiao up with Mayweather.

Rafael said this in his ESPN blog: “Top Rank’s Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, never really seemed to want to make the fight in the first place, and Mayweather’s sentence lets him off the hook. With Mayweather out of the picture, Arum can go right ahead and make a fourth fight between Pacquiao and Marquez in the spring.”

I think I agree with Rafael, only I don’t see Arum risking having the gravy train halted by putting Pacquiao back in with Marquez for a risky fourth fight; not when Pacquiao needed a gift decision to beat Marquez last month. Nah, we won’t see Arum risk having Pacquiao get exposed again, so instead it’s going to be Pacquiao vs. one of Arum’s Top Rank fighters like Miguel Cotto or Timothy Bradley.

One of those guys is likely going to get the fight. If Arum does go outside of Top Rank to hunt down a beatable opponent for Pacquiao, it’ll probably be Lamont Peterson. He’s perfect, because he’s not too quick and he’s not too powerful either. Pacquiao can beat this guy fighting at only 50% capacity. It won’t be pretty but Manny will get the win.

But, yeah, I got the feeling that Arum didn’t want to risk his cash cow against Mayweather as far back as last year when the negotiations with Mayweather went up in smoke despite Mayweather agreeing to the weight penalty and the 50-50 purse split. When the negotiations went into a deadlock about Pacquiao wanting a 24 day cut off for the random drug testing for performance enhancing drugs, Arum quickly matched up with one of his stable fighters Joshua Clottey instead of sticking it out a little longer and trying to find a middle ground.

I think Mayweather would have agreed to a 17 day cut off and the fight would have been made, but Arum ended the negotiations and matched Pacquiao with Clottey for an awful fight. That told me that Arum didn’t want to risk having his fighter Manny get possibly beat by Mayweather and ruining the money flow. You have to remember Pacquiao has been making huge bucks on pay per view no matter who Arum matches him up against. With big money coming in no matter who Arum matches Pacqiao up against, why would he want to risk losing the revenue flow by putting Pacquiao in with Mayweather for one big payday fight when Pacquiao can get the same money by fighting two soft opponents.It makes sense if you’re Pacquiao’s promoter. Arum probably knew what he had in Pacquiao a long time ago in terms of the Filipino’s raw but limited talent. Why would Arum want to risk the gravy train ending prematurely by putting Pacquiao in with Mayweather?