Pacquiao says he won’t leave Top Rank for Mayweather fight

By Boxing News - 01/15/2014 - Comments

pac3213By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao says he won’t be leaving Top Rank in order to get a big mega-payday fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Pacquiao says he doesn’t know that he would get the dream fight with Floyd Jr. even if he did leave his long-time promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. Pacquiao says that Mayweather should fight him even thought he’s still with Top Rank.

I had a feeling that Pacquiao would come out with this argument sooner or later about him not letting Mayweather get in between him and his promoter. You’ve got to respect Pacquiao for his loyalty, because it’s not everyday that a fighter walks away from a potential $50 million payday against Mayweather.

A fight between him and Floyd might even make him more than $50 million. But then again, Pacquiao had the chance to fight Mayweather two before for similar money and he chose not to do it, so this isn’t all that surprising that Pacquiao is staying he’ll stay with Top Rank.

“Floyd Mayweather Jr. never runs out of excuses just to avoid fighting me,” Pacquiao said to the Sports Inquirer. “If I leave Top Rank, there’s no guarantee the fight would push through. So, why should I leave Top Rank? Just to make Pacquiao-Mayweather fight happen? No way. Let’s do it regardless of which promotional outfit we belong. There should be no lame excuses.”

If Pacquiao chooses to stay with Top Rank then it’s highly unlikely that Mayweather will change his mind about not wanting to fight Pacquiao while he’s still with Bob Arum. Mayweather is making so much money with his own fights that he really doesn’t need to fight the Filipino star. It’s actually more in Pacquiao’s interest to fight Mayweather than vice versa.

What will Pacquiao’s choice of staying with Top Rank mean for him? Well, for starters, besides never getting the Mayweather fight, it means that he’ll likely be fighting these guys for the remainder of what’s left of his career: Ruslan Provodnikov, Tim Bradley [again], Mikey Garcia, Brandon Rios [again], Vasyl Lomachenko, and Mike Alvarado.

With those guys as his opposition, I honestly can’t see Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers rebounding from the dismal 475,000 PPV buys that he got for the Rios fight. If these are the guys that Pacquiao will pretty much be fighting for the remainder of his career, then I can see his PPV numbers going steadily downwards until he’s in the 200,000-300,000 range. Fans want to see entertaining fights, and if they don’t see Pacquiao being put in those fights then they’ll choose to avoid his PPV bouts and use their money on other things.



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