Mayweather the first option for Pacquiao if he beats Algieri, says Arum

By Boxing News - 09/05/2014 - Comments

_DSC9505(Photo credit: Idris Erba/Mayweather Promotions) By Chris Williams: If WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KOs) wins his fight against Chris Algieri (20-0, 8 KOs) on November 22nd, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says the first option he’ll try and setup for Pacquiao is a unification fight against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) in the first quarter of 2015.

That’s the fight that Arum has been craving for the past 5 years, and obviously he can’t afford to wait another 5 years for the fight to happen. It’s not likely that Pacquiao and Mayweather will still be fighting by that point.

Arum says if he can’t get Mayweather for Pacquiao then he wants WBA/WBC 140lb champion Danny Garcia for him. That’s a fight that might not be possible unless Garcia’s adviser Al Haymon blesses it. He’s the one that makes the fight for Garcia and if he doesn’t want it to happen there Arum is going to be out of luck.

“Well, the first option is and always will be Floyd Mayweather,” Arum said to thesweetscience.com. “After Floyd Mayweather, I would think [Danny] Garcia would be an attractive match.”

Reading the future is a difficult thing to do, but my guess is Arum is going to come close to getting neither of those guys for Pacquiao. Mayweather already gave Pacquiao a chance to fight him 4 years ago, but instead he fought Joshua Clottey.

The thing with Mayweather is if you a fight offered to you, it’s imperative that you take it instead of moving on to face Joshua Clottey. In looking back at that, it was probably the biggest blow it move for Pacquiao and Arum by not taking the Mayweather fight when it was offered.

Now it’s kind of late in the game for Pacquiao and he’s at a point where he could be permanently taken out of the Mayweather equation if Algieri beats him in November. A loss to Algieri will likely end any hopes of Pacquiao getting the Mayweather fight. It’s not as if Mayweather will feel sorry for him afterwards and give him a fight just for the sake of doing it.

Instead of fighting Mayweather or Garcia in 2015, I believe we’ll see Pacquiao fighting Algieri a second time and then maybe Miguel Cotto if Pacquiao is willing to move up to middleweight to take the fight. I don’t see Cotto agreeing to move down to junior middleweight to give Pacquiao a catch-weight handicap, not after Cotto gave Pacquiao a handicap in their fight in 2009.

If anyone is going to have to bend in a second Pacquiao-Cotto fight, I think it’ll be Pacquiao. Cotto is riding too high right now with his career after his big win over Sergio Martinez. If Cotto beats Saul “Canelo” Alvarez then he’s really going to be looking to call the shots.



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