By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thinks his fighter Manny Pacquiao deserved at least a 12 round draw in his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 2nd. Pacquiao didn’t get a draw though. He got a 12 round unanimous decision loss.
Arum says Pacquiao thinks he won the fight, and with two good arms, he would have made it easy. We don’t know what Pacquiao would have done with two good arms because he went through with the fight with an injured right shoulder.
Surely, Arum should have postponed the fight until his shoulder was healed so that he could test his theory of what he’d have done against Mayweather with two good arms.
“He [Pacquiao] thought he won the fight. He knew with both hands, he would have won easy,” Arum said to FighthubTV. “I watched that fight over and over again, and without being biased, in addition to the four rounds the judges gave him [Pacquiao], I gave him the 2nd. I don’t see how they could have taken the 2nd round away from him and the last round, which could have made it a draw,” Arum said.
It doesn’t matter that Arum watched the fight without being biased. The people that watched the fight overwhelmingly saw Mayweather winning. Only a very, very tiny minority saw Pacquiao winning. Arum say he’s not biased until he’s blue in the fact, but the fact is Pacquiao lost the fight and the boxing community saw him losing.
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach also thinks Pacquiao-Mayweather fight was close, and he too is kind of left on the margins with few people backing him.
It probably helps for Arum to say Pacquiao deserved a draw against Mayweather, because Arum has got to continue to try and sell Pacquiao’s fights on pay-per-view.
It would look bad if Arum acknowledged what a lot of boxing fans are saying that Pacquiao looked bad, fought in a timid manner, and appeared totally clueless in the ring. If Arum agreed with what many boxing fans have been saying about Pacquiao in the two months since his defeat, I don’t know that a lot of fans would want to continue to pay to see Pacquiao’s fights on pay-per-view.
How do you sell the fights of Pacquiao now that he’s been beaten by Mayweather? If Arum trots out Terence Crawford, Brandon Rios or Tim Bradley for Pacquiao’s next fight, I think he’ll be looking at a low buy rate for the fight, possibly less than 400,000 PPV buys. But if Arum builds Pacquiao up by saying he deserved a draw, then some fans might start to change their opinion of the fight over the coming months and want to see a rematch between Mayweather and Pacquiao.
With two good arms, Pacquiao would lose just as badly as he did in the first fight in my view. He’s too sloppy with his attacking style, too short, and too easy too hit. Mayweather will nail Pacquiao with shots all night long when he attacks him, and boxing fans will likely be angry they wasted their money on paying to see them fight a second time.
Pacquiao is a good fighter when matched up against certain guys. If you put him in with limited fighters like Joshua Clottey, Rios, Tim Bradley, Chris Algieri, Shane Mosley, and Ricky Hatton, he looks good. But when you match him against excellent fighters like Mayweather and Juan Manuel Marquez, Pacquiao struggles and loses, or gets controversial decision wins. Arum can bring Pacquiao back, but he just needs to trot out some of his Top Rank stable fighters for him to fight instead of putting him in with the best.
As long as Arum puts Pacquiao back on the diet of guys like Rios, Mosley, Algieri and Bradley, he’ll do well again. But if he puts him in with someone that actually fight like Mayweather, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Mayweather or Gennady Golovkin, Pacquiao will continue to lose. I just hope that after Pacquiao’s next loss, we don’t get another surprise about him having come into the fight with a preexisting shoulder injury. All these excuses will make Pacquiao look really bad, like a sore loser in the eyes of some boxing fans.
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