By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach wants to see the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight happen but not on May 5th and not at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach prefers that the fight take place later on in the year because Pacquiao and Arum are already negotiating a fight with another opponent that Roach won’t say the name of.
When the fight takes place, Roach prefers that the venue be either the huge Cowboy stadium in Texas or in Dubai. Roach likes the Cowboys stadium because it can fit 100,000 fans and he thinks a fight of the magnitude of Pacquiao-Mayweather would actually fill the stadium. Dubai would be a terrible venue for the American public. Maybe it would be good for Pacqquiao but what about all the U.S fans? It would self serving fight venue for Roach, Pacquiao and Arum but a lousy ones for U.S fans to have to fly to and deal with the tremendous cost and hassle of airline travel in a bad economy. Good for Pacquiao, Arum and Roach, but bad for U.S fans.
Speaking with AFP, Roach said “Dallas would be the best place to put on that fight in the U.S. because you could get 100,000 people in the Cowboys Stadium, but Dubai is the best moneywise.”
Roach likes Dubai because of the tax situation and supposedly there is a group of investors in Dubai that would put up a huge chunk of money to have the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight take place there.
I don’t know that Mayweather would be on board with having a fight in Dubai and it wouldn’t be fair to U.S fans to have to fly all the way to Dubai to see that fight.
In this economy, we might see only the wealthiest and/or most devoted of Pacquiao’s fans willing to travel that far to see the fight. I can’t see a lot of Mayweather’s fans being willing to pay all that money to travel to Dubai in great numbers. The audience could be mostly people from Dubai and Pacquiao fans. I can see a lot of empty seats in a fight in that venue.
As far as the Cowboys stadium, Mayeather has reportedly been against fighting in that state and prefers to fighting in Las Vegas where he lives. I can’t see him changing his mind about just because Roach, Bob Arum and Michael Koncz want to squeeze as much money they can out of the fight. I also don’t think 100,000 fans will come all the way to Texas to see it.
Maybe Pacquiao’s fans would but I can’t see a ton of Mayweather’s fans being willing to come all that ways. My guess is the crowd would be lucky to reach 40,000 to 50,000. With those kinds of numbers, it would be completely stupid to put the fight in Texas. You’d have a half empty stadium and Arum and Roach would be unhappy about it. The Antonio Margarito vs. Pacquiao fight took place in the Cowboys stadium in 2010 and brought in only 41,000 fans.
This comes after Arum had been talking about it possibly drawing 70,000. He really overestimated how many fans would be interested in seeing that fight and I suspect it would be the same for Pacquiao-Mayweather. The location would be all wrong. You wouldn’t be able to get a large Hispanic crowd to come to that fight unless Arum packed the undercard with nothing but Mexican fighter like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. But I still don’t see it even breaking 50,000. Roach would look foolish afterwards given his 100,000 fan prediction.
I think instead of getting greedy and dreaming of stuff that has little basis in reality, Roach and Arum need to put the fight in Las Vegas and stop making excuses for Pacquiao needing more time. They’re thinking too about making as much money possible and it’s resulting in the fight not getting made. They want it to be perfect so that every last nickel can be squeezed from the boxing public but then fight can’t happen because there’s never enough time when you’re dealing with someone that has to have it exactly perfect before they’ll agree to fight. I think Mayeather should steer clear of the whole lot of them because it’s just not worthy it. Too many headaches with this bunch. Let them keep putting Pacquiao in with Arum’s fading Top Rank stars of yesterday until he retires.
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