By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach says he received a tempting offer of $10 million to stage Manny Pacquiao’s next fight in Dubai in April. Roach says he told the person to contact Top Rank promoter Bob Arum to see if he was interested in staging Pacquiao’s next fight over there.
Roach said to Sport360 “I got a phone call from someone in Dubai on Monday, who offered $10 million for Manny to fight there in April, but I told him to call Bob Arum because I don’t make his [Pacquiao] fights; I just get him ready. A place like Dubai for a fight could be great. It’s a great location for pay per view TV networks.”
It looks Pacquiao has his mind made up that he really wants to fight in April, and if this offer is legit, and who knows if it is, that would be an offer that Arum might find too good to turn down. Roach doesn’t want Pacquiao to fight until September in order for Pacquiao to recover from his bad knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last December.
Roach says he’s okay with Pacquiao fighting in April if he feels he can do it. Arum seems to want Pacquiao to wait until September as well because he’s talking about wanting to have his brain checked out at the Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas to make sure he’s fine.
If Pacquiao is going to be fighting in April then Arum is going to have to find him an opponent awfully quick so that they can start marketing the fight. It’s almost February and that’s really close to April. It obviously won’t be difficult to find an opponent because this is just a tune-up fight and they can find a scrub almost anywhere. However, Arum might want to put one of his Top Rank stable fighters in with Pacquiao so that he can keep the fight in house.
Arum doesn’t have much to offer in terms of what you would call a tune-up fight. He’s got Jessie Vargas, a pure boxer, and Brandon Rios, a slugger. There’s no way Pacquiao will fight Rios, even if Arum tries to push that fight on him. I can see Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz saying no to that fight. And Vargas isn’t a good option because he circles the ring a lot, and when he’s not circling, he’s doing a lot of clinching. It would be like Pacquiao fighting a taller version of Tim Bradley. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vargas were to box Pacquiao well enough to make it close.
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