Arum: Pacquiao has agreed to fight Cotto-Martinez winner

By Boxing News - 05/16/2014 - Comments

pac888By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says that Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO’s) wants to fight the winner of the June 7th fight between WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO’s) and Miguel Cotto (38-2, 31 KO’s). What Arum doesn’t say is what weight Pacquiao will be fighting the winner of that fight at. Given Pacquiao’s history of fighting bigger guys at strength draining catch weights, it won’t work if the Cotto-Sergio winner has to drain down to 147 or 150 in order to give Pacquiao a big enough handicap for the fight to take place.

“Yeah, Manny has agreed to fight the winner [of Cotto vs. Martinez,” Arum said. “I haven’t talked to either of these fighters whether if they won if they would want to fight Manny, but I’ll do that after the fight. I’ll only have to talk to one guy, not two.”

Pacquiao’s pay-per-view numbers have been below 1 million buys for the last several years, but by agreeing to fight the Sergio vs. Cotto winner, this is one way where Pacquiao’s PPV numbers will definitely get back to over 1 million buys. How long they stay at that level will depend on how he does against the winner of this fight, if he gets the fight, and which kind of opponents Arum matches him up against afterwards. Arum has the potential of recreating Pacquiao’s popularity if he starts matching him against good fighters with a fan base, and if he stops with the never-ending rematches.

Martinez has wanted a fight against Pacquiao for years, and he’s even volunteered to move down to 154 for the fight to take place. Obviously, Martinez would be the ideal opponent for Pacquiao, because he wants the fight so much that he would be someone that they might be able to get him to agree to a huge drop in weight to 150. It would be hard enough for Martinez to drain down to 154, but if he drains down to 150, I think the fights won for Pacquiao just based on that amount of weight loss. We could be looking at a Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya 2 type of fight with Sergio coming into the fight listless and so weak from having drained down to 150 that Pacquiao could probably knock him out by blowing his breath on him. Sergio will probably be so thankful to get the fight against Pacquiao – and the chance at a career payday – that he’ll agree to whatever catch weight handicap Pacquiao and his team ask for.

Cotto will be a lot tougher to deal with if he beats Sergio, because he’s already walked away from a huge money offer to fight Pacquiao for a second time because he didn’t want to deal with another catch weight fight. Cotto fought Pacquiao at a catch weight in 2009 while Cotto was the WBO welterweight champion, and he looked drained and weak in that fight from having to come in lighter than usual. I could see Cotto not budging on the weight if he picks up the WBC middleweight title. If Paquiao wanted to fight him, he’d likely have to have the fight take place at the full 160 lb limit for the middleweight division instead of looking to get a catch weight handicap of 155lbs with the WBC middleweight still being on the line.

Pacquiao won the WBC junior middleweight title in a catch weight fight against Antonio Margarito at 150 lbs instead of the full weight of 154 in 2010. What’s interesting in that fight, besides the considerable weight handicap, is that Margarito was the one that got to fight for the vacant WBC title instead of arguably much superior fighters like Erislandy Lara. I think it would have been a much different story if Lara had been in the ring with Pacquiao in that catch weight fight rather than Margarito, who at that point in his career looked like a shell of the fighter that he once was in his prime.

Madison Square Garden, New York, New York, USA 1



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