By Chris Williams: From the way Bob Arum of Top Rank is talking he doesn’t sound like a promoter who believes that Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) will leave Top Rank when his contract with them expires this year. In fact, Arum is talking about eventually matching WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (33-0, 28 KO’s) up with Pacquiao when Mikey grows into the light welterweight division.
I’m not sure how long we’re talking about for Mikey to move up to the 140 lb. division, but I would assume that Arum is talking about at least 2-3 years. This means that Arum likely figures that Pacquiao will re-sign with Top Rank and stay for a considerable amount of time.
“I wouldn’t be surprised as he [Mikey Garcia] gets older to move up to 140 and possibly fight Manny Pacquiao,” Arum said.
Well, Arum already matched former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios against Pacquiao and he did terribly, so I guess it’s not surprising that Arum would pool from the super featherweight division to find someone from his Top Rank stable to put in with Pacquiao for the future. It’s not as if Arum has a lot of guys to match against him. But if Pacquiao re-signs with Arum then he’ll be saying goodbye to a potential fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and a lot of other fighters that he could potentially fight.
The fact that Arum is already talking about the Pacquiao-Garcia fight means that we’re probably goig to see that soon. I see this as a sign that Arum is running out of guys in his Top Rank stable to match against Pacquiao. If he’s having to pool from the featherweight division to find opponents for Pacquiao to fight then that’s not a good sign.
If Pacquiao stays with Arum and Top Rank, then I guess it’s fights against Mikey Garcia, more fights with Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley probably. Then there’s the recently knocked out Mike Alvarado. I suspect he’ll be trotted out for a fight against Pacquiao as well after he’s been put in a couple of easy fights to build his name back up with the casual fans.
If you saw Mikey’s last fight against Roman Martinez from last November, you might have noticed Mikey getting knocked down in the 2nd round in one of the few moments in the fight where the rail-thin Martinez showed any offense. Expecting Mikey to move up to lightweight and then light welterweight is probably asking too much from him.
If Arum is thinking of seriously matching Mikey with Pacquiao in the future, then Arum is going to need to be careful with who he matches Mikey up against, because he’s way too thin to move up to 140 and compete. You put a skinny guy like Mikey in with someone Lucas Matthysse and Danny Garcia, and he’s going to get taken apart. These are fighters that take weight of to get down to 140, and they then rehydrate to the 150s.
Mikey isn’t going to be a legit 140 lb. fighter if he moves up to the light welterweight. He’s going to be a pumped up featherweight and he’ll get blown apart if Arum matched him up against someone good. But Mikey won’t have to worry about Danny Garcia or Matthysse, because those are Golden Boy fighters. So it’s possible Arum could match him against a weaker fighter. I wouldn’t put Mikey in with WBO light welterweight champion Ruslan Provodnikov, because that would be about the same thing as putting Mikey in with Matthysse or Danny Garcia.
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