By Chris Williams: With Manny Pacquiao’s next opponent pretty much picked out now with Miguel Cotto filling the Filipino fighter’s next date on June 9th in Las Vegas, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is now looking to set up his next fight after that and is hoping it will be against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in November.

According to writer Ronnie Nathanielsz from the Manila Standard, Arum wants to start negotiations with Mayweather’s representatives now for the November fight.

Arum told Manila Standard “Let’s sit down, let’s negotiate a deal for November. Floyd fights in May, Manny in June. It will be really big and everybody will have an additional payday and before you know it, it will be November and we’ll own the entire year.”

It sounds great, right? But how do we know that when November comes around that Arum won’t slip in another one of his fighters for yet another “Additional payday” before the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. That’s the thing with these easy money fights against guys that Arum knows Pacquiao can whip. The money is good, the risk is low and then you see it potentially ending if you put Pacquiao in with Mayweather. You see Mayweather can end the Pacquiao gravy train with one good beating and this could be part of Arum’s reluctance to put his fighter in with Mayweather.

Look at it this way: Arum still has Timothy Bradley and Mike Jones in his Top Rank stable that Pacquiao hasn’t fought before. There’s also Antonio Margarito, who Pacquiao made good money against in their November 2010. The fight was a mismatch, but actually a lot more competitive than the Cotto-Pacquiao fight.

Since we’re seeing a rematch between Pacquiao and Cotto now three years later, there’s a good chance that Arum could put Pacquiao back in with Margarito for a similar needless rematch. The Margarito-Pacquiao fight made excellent money on PPV, and since that seems to be the major reason why Arum is going with the Pacquiao-Cotto rematch, I can see Arum further pushing the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight into the future while he exhaust the big money in house Top Rank rematch fights. Margarito did do a lot better job against Pacquiao than Cotto did, so it’s not beyond the possibilities that we could see a rematch between Pacquiao and Margarito too in the near future. I can’t see Pacquiao being allowed to fight Mayweather.

Oh, I’m sure that Arum will go through the motions in trying to make the fight but something will come up and Arum will likely go ahead and put Pacquiao in with one of his guys.