By Chris Williams: After having appeared less than excited about a match-up between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. earlier this year before Mayweather began serving his jail sentence last June, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum apparently is now starting to show interest in putting his fighter in against Mayweather for some reason.

Arum told the Manilastandardtoday.com “I want to explore with Manny the feasibility of doing a Mayweather fight sometime next year. I have to get his idea on schedules and when he is going to have to start campaigning for office. I know how to handle that with the Mayweather people and do the best deal possible and then get back to Manny. I am very optimistic we are going to get it done for next year.”

I don’t know if this means that Arum is really interested in matching his cash cow against Mayweather or if this is just more lip service from Arum. He certainly had the chance to match Pacquiao with Mayweather last May, but Arum came up with a variety of excuses for why the fight couldn’t happen after Mayweather asked for and was given a delay in serving his jail sentence.

Arum initially said Pacquiao couldn’t fight in time to beat the June 1st time that Mayweather would start jail sentence because Pacquiao needed more time for a cut to heal from his November fight against Juan Manuel Marquez.

Later, Arum said that there needed to be an outdoor arena built before the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight could take place. Eventually, Mayweather grew frustrated at the roadblocks and moved on and faced Miguel Cotto in what turned out to be a huge pay per view fight last May with their fight drawing 1.5 million PPV buys. Arum turned around and put Pacquiao in with Tim Bradley in a Top Rank in house fight last June in a fight that Pacquiao shockingly lost.

So why now is Arum suddenly interested in matching Pacquiao with Mayweather? You guess is as good as mine. If Arum is seriously interested and not just talking, then I think he could realize that unless he makes the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight as soon as possible, there’s a good chance that Pacquiao will lose again and along with it any chance that he ever hard to get the big payday fight against Mayweather. That’s not just Pacquiao would lose all that good cash. Arum would lose out as well because he gets paid handsomely as Pacquiao’s promoter.