By Chris Williams: In a sign that things aren’t going well with their number 1 option, Michael Koncz, the adviser for Manny Pacquiao, says they now have 4 candidates that they’re looking at for the Filipino stars next fight on April 12th in Las Vegas, Nevada. It went from having 2 guys [Tim Bradley and Ruslan Provodnikov] that they were looking at to have 4 candidates. I don’t know about you, but that tells me something isn’t going well with the negotiations.
“We’re not leaning towards anyone,” Koncz said to Philstar. “But even if we are, wouldn’t admit it. Anytime a fighter thinks he’s a top choice, his price goes up. It’s useless to talk about the candidates openly.”
Koncz isn’t making much sense. He’s saying they’re not learning towards anyone, but then in the next breath he’s saying they wouldn’t admit it if they were. It just makes you not have a lot of faith in what he’s saying.
Having 4 candidates, if Koncz is being truthful about that, tells me that they’re not sold on the idea of putting Pacquiao in with Ruslan Provodnikov if they can’t get Bradley to come down in his asking price. Bradley is obviously the guy they want, but they don’t want to give him huge money to where it would likely cut into Pacquiao’s purse. I can understand that. Bradley isn’t a great opponent to where he’ll pull in a lot of pay-per-view buys, so why should Pacquiao have to see his purse cut in order to give Bradley his asking price?
Besides that, it’s a fight that isn’t going to be a big one. The other other two mystery candidates are probably about as good as Provodnikov and Bradley will be, but they could get them at a cheaper price with less risk involved. Provodnikov is a dangerous fight for Pacquiao., and Bob Arum is making a mistake if he allows Pacquiao to fight him. Provodnikov is only under contract with Top Rank for one fight, so it doesn’t make sense to have him potentially knock Pacquiao out, and then move on from Top Rank. With two other guys, they could get a much lower risk opponent with the same results in PPV buys.
Arum needs to think outside the box. He should push Mikey Garcia, Yuriorkis Gamboa or Terence Crawford in there with Pacquiao. I like the idea of Pacquiao fighting any one of those guys a lot better than I do see him fight Provodnikov or Bradley. Those are new opponents, and it would be interesting to see what they could do with Pacquiao. If Pacquiao is a shot fighter, then those guys will definitely expose that. Brandon Rios was too slow and beat up looking in order to really test Pacquiao in their last fight. But I bleieve Garcia, Gamboa and Crawford could give him a run for his money.
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