By Chris Williams: Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy Promotions sees the 82-year-old promoter Bob Arum as the one standing in the way of a mega fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao from taking place. Hopkins thinks the fight between the two stars of the sport won’t take place until Arum is out of the picture. Hopkins says he’s not wishing anything bad on Arum; he just sees the fight as undo-able while Arum is above ground, living and breathing.
Mayweather doesn’t want to do business with Arum for whatever reason. It’s unclear whether Mayweather will be open to working with Top Rank if Arum is no longer around, as Mayweather hasn’t said what he’ll do in the event Arum passes away.
“Not as long as Bob Arum is living,” Hopkins said to esnewsreporting in speaking about a potential mega fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather. “As long as he’s [Arum] living, I don’t think you’re going to see that fight happen.”
Mayweather has very little time left with his career, so the chances of a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight taking place, even after Arum has passed, are quite slim. Pacquiao is already in negotiations with Arum for a 5-fight extension that will take him through 2016. That contract will be the end of a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. Pacquiao is a loyal fighter, and it’s understandable why he would want to stick it out with Arum until his career ends.
Money doesn’t seem to matter as much with Pacquiao as it does with other fighters in the sport, and so he probably doesn’t care that he could make a considerable amount of money by leaving Top Rank to fight guys like Mayweather or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. By sticking it out with Arum until the end, Pacquiao will be showing his loyalty. Pacquiao will still make big bank by staying with Arum and Top Rank, but definitely not the huge money he would get in leaving them to fight the likes of Mayweather, Canelo, Amir Khan, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia and Lucas Matthysse.
Those fights would take Pacquiao to the end of his career if he were to leave Top Rank. In saying with Top Rank, it’s hard to predict who Pacquiao will be facing other than Juan Manuel Marquez and possibly another fight or two against Tim Bradley. Arum recently mentioned Miguel Cotto and Sergio Martinez as possible opponents for Pacquiao, but those would be very, very tough fights for him, and they wouldn’t bring in the big money that a Mayweather-Pacquiao or Pacquiao-Canelo fight would bring in.
Pacquiao won’t be able to fight both Sergio and Cotto, because one of them will be weeded out after their fight on June 7th, unless Arum wants to match Pacquiao against someone coming off of a loss again. Arum did that in putting Pacquiao in with Brandon Rios and Joshua Clottey after the two fighters had been beaten in their previous bouts. Not surprisingly, those fights brought in less than spectacular PPV numbers. It might not be a good idea for Pacquiao to keep saying yes to fights against guys coming off of a loss.
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