Pacquiao being given plenty of time to recover from KO

By Boxing News - 02/12/2013 - Comments

pac92By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has gotten his way with Manny Pacquiao no longer looking to slip in an April tune-up fight to get ready for a potential rematch against his conqueror Juan Manuel Marquez in September. Presumably, Arum couldn’t find anything for Pacquiao in any of the Asian countries that would bring him the kind of cash that he’s been getting for the past couple of years, so Arum abandoned the effort.

This is good news for Pacquiao because it’ll give his head extra time to recover from his vicious 6th round knockout loss to the Mexican warrior Marquez last December. At the same time it’ll give Arum more time to try and work a deal with Marquez to get him back in the ring with Pacquiao.

Arum would like to get Marquez to agree to the fight this week, so then he could start slowly marketing the Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight for the next seven months to create a huge pay per view bout on either Showtime or HBO.

If Pacquiao hasn’t fully recovered from his KO loss to Marquez by September then he’s going to get plastered all over the ring by Marquez. I’m sure Pacquiao will have played out in his mind all the mistakes he made against Marquez last time, and he’ll obviously be trying not to make those same mistakes again.

However, Pacquiao has to attack because that’s his whole game, and Marquez knows now exactly how to meet those attacks by waiting for Pacquiao’s customary feints to tag him with right hands. If Pacquiao’s ability to take head shots isn’t what it was then Arum is going to be a sad promoter for making the rematch because he’s going to see Pacquiao get knocked out again.

If Pacquiao gets knocked cold again then Arum needs to forget about shuffling his Filipino fighter in out and out of fights with Marquez, and instead look for a good exit strategy by trying to get the cash out fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. as quickly as he can before the boxing public lose all interest in seeing Pacquiao fight on PPV.

Arum can take Pacquiao’s fights out of the country if he wants to in order to save money, but if Pacquiao is losing to everyone, then what’s the point? Pacquiao will be the boxing world’s version of the sinking Titanic, and Arum will be making a mistake if he doesn’t get on a lifeboat by making the Pacquiao-Mayweather cash out fight while he still can.



Comments are closed.