By Chris Williams: Whether Bob Arum of Top Rank wants to admit it or not, there’s a lot of pressure on his cash cow fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (54-3-2, 38 KO’s) to match the huge pay-per-view numbers that WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. recently brought in for his bout against WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto last month on May 5th.

Pacquiao faces Timothy Bradley (28-0, 12 KO’s) on Saturday night in a PPV bout that will go for a cool $54.95 on HBO. Pacquiao’s promoter Arum has picked the wrong fighter at the wrong time given Mayweather’s monstrous 1.5 million buys for his bout with Cotto. Pacquiao will be lucky if he can even bring in 700,000 PPV buys for the Bradley fight, because Bradley isn’t a star and the interest just isn’t there in this fight. Once Pacquiao fails to bring in the huge numbers that Mayweather recently brought in, Pacquiao can forget all about asking for an even 50-50 financial split with Mayweather in a future bout.

Oh, Arum and Pacquiao can ask Mayweather for fight on even terms financially, but they’re going to be laughed at so hard that they’re better off not even asking. Pacquiao will be lucky if he can get a 30% cut if he comes up with some dreadful numbers for the Bradley fight like I think he will. And if Pacquiao loses to Bradley, then he can forget all about ever getting a bout against Mayweather.

Pacquiao would have to settle for trying to beat Bradley in the rematch, and then maybe taking on some of Arum’s other Top Rank stable fighters. I guess Pacquiao can fight Juan Manuel Marquez for a fourth fight, but Pacquiao already said he’s not interested in that fight and neither is his trainer Freddie Roach. So Bradley beats Pacquiao a couple of times, and Pacquiao’s options will be pretty poor, especially if he says no to the Marquez rematch. At that point Pacquiao might as well retire because you know he won’t fight Mike Jones, and he can’t fight Amir Khan because he’s a Golden Boy Promotions fighter.

The undercard fights for this Saturday’s PPV card are as follows:

Guillermo Rigondeaux vs. Teon Kennedy
Mike Jones vs. Randall Bailey
Jorge Arce vs. Jesus M Rojas
Mikael Zewski vs. John Ryan Grimaldo