Arum thinks Brandon Rios was a better opponent than Maidana for PPV

By Boxing News - 04/15/2014 - Comments

pac#4By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum hasn’t been shy about voicing his opposition to WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) facing WBA welterweight champ Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) in a pay-per-view bout on May 3rd on Showtime from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Not only does Arum think the Mayweather-Maidana fight is a bad PPV fight for boxing fans due to the imbalance in talent between them, but Arum also thinks it’s a bad fight for the MGM Grand due his belief that the fight will be a non-competitive one.

When someone asked Arum at last Saturday night’s post-fight press conference following Manny Pacquiao’s win over Tim Bradley, why Arum let his No.1 fighter Pacquiao face Brandon Rios in a PPV bout last year in November, Arum said he had no problems with Rios because Pacquiao was coming off of a bad knockout loss at the time to Juan Manuel Marquez. But with Mayweather, he’s unbeaten and Arum feels that he should be giving the fans their monies worth by taking on more competitive opposition, like Pacquiao for instance.

“You have to understand that at the time Manny was coming off of a devastating knockout and he then fights Brandon Rios,” Arum said. “He’s not in his words ‘The greatest fighter that ever lived.’ So, Rios was a decent opponent, and it was an opponent appropriate for Manny, who had just been knocked on his a** and we had thought that he had suffered a serious injury. So you have to be realistic about it. If Floyd Mayweather had been knocked out by Canelo, which didn’t happen, then I would say the same thing – he’s entitled to fight a Maidana.”

What Arum fails to explain is why, if he knew that Rios was a tune-up type of an opponent for Pacquiao, why did Arum still have that as a PPV fight for Pacquiao? If his whole thing is to give boxing fans their monies worth on PPV, why didn’t he just make the Pacquiao-Rios fight for free without having boxing fans pay to see a tune-up fight? If Arum wants boxing fans to get a good deal, why have fans pay to see a tune-up opponent? If it’s about boxing fans getting value, why didn’t Arum put a good undercard with Pacquiao’s recent rematch with Bradley last Saturday night?

Maidana is an excellent opponent for Mayweather simply because he puts on exciting fights, and he’s the WBA welterweight champion. In the past, Arum matched Pacquiao against Shane Mosley, Antonio Margarito and Joshua Clottey, none of which had titles in their possession and each fight was considered to be a mismatch going in.

Mosley hadn’t won a fight in the last two years before facing Pacquiao, and he was coming off of a draw and a loss in his last two fights. Margarito looked like a shell of his former self when he fought Pacquiao. Clottey was coming off of a loss to Miguel Cotto when he fought Pacquiao. It doesn’t make sense for Arum to get upset about Mayweather fighting Maidana by saying it’s a mismatch, when he’s put Pacquiao into plenty of mismatches against fighters without a title in their possession.



Comments are closed.