Pacquiao’s next opponent WON’T be named tonight by Arum

By Boxing News - 12/11/2015 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was supposed to be naming the next opponent for his fighter former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) tonight on the Top Rank truTV telecast headlined by his fighter super bantamweight Nonito Donaire vs. Cesar Juarez from the Coliseo Roberto Clemente, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

However, according to ESPN, Arum won’t be making that announcement because Pacquiao is said to be not ready to name his next opponent for his April 9th fight.

“I was asked to tell you on Bob’s behalf that, unfortunately, Top Rank will not have an announcement on truTV as originally planned as Manny is not ready to make a decision on his opponent yet,” Top Rank publicist Fred Sternburg said to ESPN.com on Thursday evening, via ABC.com.

This could mean any number of things. It could mean that Pacquiao is still waiting on Floyd Mayweather Jr. to see if he’ll come out of retirement for a big money rematch with him. It makes a lot more sense for Pacquiao to exhaust all his efforts at trying to face Mayweather again then for him to pick from the gang of three – Terence Crawford, Tim Bradley and Amir Khan – that the 84-year-old Arum has personally put together for Pacquiao to choose from for his April 9th fight.

There’s nothing wrong with Pacuqiao fighting one of three fighters, but there’s also nothing right about it either. If the idea is to get the most attention possible from the boxing world, I somehow doubt that Pacquiao will achieve that by fighting the likes of Bradley, Crawford or Khan. Those are nice regular HBO type opponents, but let’s be serious about this; those are not PPV worthy opponents for Pacquiao if he wants to get the most out of his next fight. If I’m Pacquiao, I’d tell Arum not interested in fighting any of those guys.

Pacquiao already fought Bradley twice, and the PPV numbers were less than spectacular. There’s no reason for Pacquiao to fight him again, because he already established that he’s better than him. It would be a mistake for Pacquiao and Top Rank to make a third fight between them because it would look too much like an in house money grab. It would be better for Pacquiao to be put in with someone like Mayweather or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for his next fight.

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Tim Bradley was expected to be named by Arum as Pacquiao’s next opponent, at least that’s what the rumors were. However, if the idea was for Arum to announce Crawford as Pacquiao’s next opponent, it would have been a huge slap in the face of Bradley, because he’s working the truTV card as a broadcaster. If Bradley didn’t get the fight, it would have looked really bad with Arum choosing that telecast to name Crawford as Pacquiao’s opponent. You have to wonder whether Crawford is indeed the choice for Pacquiao and maybe Arum realized how bad it would have been had he named Crawford as the guy during the telecast. This is all speculation, of course.

Some boxing fans think that Pacquiao has been picking the guys that Arum wanted him to all these years. With Arum seeming very interested in Pacquiao fighting his fighter Crawford next, it would mean that Arum would have announced him as Pacquiao’s next fight on the truTV broadcast. But in doing so, it would have put Bradley in a potentially embarrassing situation where he would be watching all of this happen and he would have to comment on it on a broadcast that he’s working.

Pacquiao is getting a guaranteed $20 million for his April 9th fight. This means he’ll still make good money even if he picks Crawford or Bradley, and the PPV numbers end up being very, very low, as some boxing fans are already predicting. If Pacquiao is going to make that much guaranteed money, then it almost doesn’t matter who he faces. Of course, Pacquiao would still be better off facing someone that the boxing public actually wants to see him fight.

There aren’t too many boxing fans excited about seeing Pacquiao fight Crawford or Bradley though. The fans want to see Pacquiao fight a big name for his April 9th fight, and those aren’t big names. But for Arum to give Pacquiao a big name, he would need to agree to match him up with a fighter outside of his Top Rank stable. Arum just doesn’t have any big names in his current stable of fighters. The big names are with promotional companies like Mayweather Promotions and Golden Boy or even K2 Promotions.

What Arum should do with Crawford and Bradley is match them up against each other. Maybe the winner of the fight might pick up a nice fan base so that they can become a PPV attraction. I wouldn’t bet on that happening, but at least the winner of that fight would become a tiny bit more popular. The thing is I’m not sure that Bradley’s manager would elect to agree to a fight against Crawford because it’s not a fight that would attract a lot of the casual boxing fans, because Crawford isn’t well-known with the casual fans. In other words, the fight would be more trouble than it’s worth. Anyway, Crawford has already said he won’t fight Bradley because the two of them are friends.

In that case, Arum should try and talk Khan into fighting Crawford or Bradley. He’d have to throw some serious money at Khan for him to agree to the fight, because Khan isn’t going to agree to fight either of those guys unless he can get a big payday. Khan is with Al Haymon, his adviser. Arum usually doesn’t work with Haymon, so it’s not likely that Arum will try and match Khan against Crawford or Bradley. That’s too bad though because Arum is going to need to do something to keep Crawford and Bradley busy. If he’s starting to run out of Top Rank stable fighters to put them in with, then he’s going to have to look to match him against non-Top Rank fighters.



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