Arum says Pacquiao-Khan not agreed

By Boxing News - 11/03/2015 - Comments

arum4334By Scott Gilfoid: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wasn’t happy about the story that surfaced today by a UK site, saying that the fight between Arum’s fighter Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan is a done deal for early next year.

Arum said that news is absolutely false. Pacquiao hasn’t made the decision yet who he’ll be facing in April of 2016 in what will be the last fight of his career. Arum did say that the two contestants for Pacquiao’s final fight of his career are Arum’s fighter Terence Crawford and Khan.

According to Dan Rafael, Arum told Crawford’s manager that the Pacquiao-Pacquiao story wasn’t true. The fact that Arum had to let Dunkin know that his fighter Crawford is still in the running for the fight suggests that there’s a very, very good chance that he’ll be the one getting the fight with Pacquiao next rather than Khan.

“Spoke to Arum about deal Khan supposedly agreed to fight Manny. Arum: ‘It’s total bull—-. It’s not true. This is [expletive] ridiculous,’” Rafael said on his Twitter today. “Arum was laughing hard at UK’s Daily Mail report on MP-AK [Pacquiao-Khan], which has been wrong a 1000 times on these thing. ‘What are they talking about?’ While I was on with Arum, Terence Crawford manager Cameron Dunkin called in his cell. Arum was screaming at him: “It’s not [expletive] true. Arum hangs up with Dunkin, gets back with me and goes off on UK report. Arum said over and over he has no deal with anyone and wont until Manny decides who he wants to fight. ‘It’s such bull—-!” Arum was going crazy. Arum said the candidates to fight Manny are Crawford & Khan. ‘Top Rank will send a contract to one when Manny makes his decision.’”

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It looks like sites are trying to jump the gun in announcing the opponent for Pacquiao’s next fight, but I think they need to look closely at who Arum seems interested in so that they guess right. I think it’s going to be Crawford all the way.

I think Pacquiao will choose whoever he thinks Arum wants him to choose, and I see Crawford as being the guy that Arum wants for this fight. Let’s be real; it’s not that Crawford will bring any money, because he doesn’t have a huge built in fan base in the U.S. He’s only popular in Nebraska. He’s not someone who is popular across the U.S. Once you remove Nebraska from the equation, Crawford is invisible. But Crawford is with Top Rank, and he’ll get a little more popular after he fights Pacquiao.

I don’t see him being any more popular than some of Pacquiao’s past victims Chris Algieri and Brandon Rios. But I think Arum is going to gamble by taking the lesser money fight by having Pacquiao fight Crawford rather than Khan for his final fight. Khan will need to look in another direction once he gets skipped over by Arum and Pacquiao.

That could be good news for IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook, because I believe that Khan might finally choose to face him once he realizes he has no chance of fighting Pacquiao.



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