By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer says he doesn’t think that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is interested in matching his No.1 money fighter Manny Pacquiao up with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Arum says he wants to Pacquiao up against Mayweather next, and he sees Mayweather’s fight against WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana as a waste of time for fans because he feels that it promises to be a mismatch. Arum also asked for fans to boycott the Mayweather-Maidana fight, and that’s something that has Schaefer feeling that Arum isn’t serious about wanting a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.
The chances of boxing fans boycotting the Mayweather-Maidana fight are pretty much zero, because it’s a fight that promises to be all action, and Golden Boy Promotions has done a good job of including a good undercard with it. If anything, the Mayweather-Maidana fight will bring in 1.4 million pay-per-view buys.
“He sure knows how to get something done: By telling people to boycott Floyd’s fight, calling it a terrible matchup,” Schaefer said to the LA Times. “Is that how you negotiate or create goodwill? It doesn’t make me want to say things that would leave hope for that fight, because I don’t believe he wants the fight. This is how you do things when you don’t want to get things done.”
Arum does have an odd way of going about trying to get a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight by asking fans to boycott his fight. Arum’s stance will create bad blood, and lead to the exact opposite of what he says he wants. If Arum is serious about wanting Mayweather to face Pacquiao, he’s going about it in a ham handed manner. For a promoter with as much experience as Arum, he should know better than to try this method of getting Mayweather and Golden Boy Promotions to sit down at the bargaining table.
Arum said this last Saturday night at the post-fight press conference following Pacquiao’s win over Tim Bradley at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada: “If they boycott the nonsense on May 3. [Mayweather-Maidana]. That’s what the public should do. [If the media] wants that fight, tell the public not to buy pay-per-view and not to buy tickets.”
Schaefer went onto say that he’s not going to even think about a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight until Mayweather’s fight with Maidana is past them. It’s not a sure thing that Mayweather will win this fight.
Comments are closed.