Arum explains why Adrien Broner wasn’t selected for Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 01/01/2016 - Comments

arum3242(Top Rank promoter Bob Arum seen here cradling Tim Bradley’s head after his controversial victory over Manny Pacquiao in their first fight in 2012) By Chris Williams: Many boxing fans were unhappy with Manny Pacquiao selecting Tim Bradley, a fighter he arguably has already beaten twice, for his next fight on April 9th on HBO pay-per-view from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This could be the final fight of Pacquiao’s long 22-year pro career, and fans wanted to see him fight someone different like WBO light welterweight champion Adrien Broner (31-2, 23 KOs) rather than a fighter that he’s already arguably beaten twice in 32-year-old Bradley.

Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank says Broner would have had no business being in the ring with a fighter like Pacquiao. Arum compares Broner with Andre Berto, a fighter that looked very over-matched in his one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September in Las Vegas.

“Let’s be honest when we talk about Mayweather and Berto,” Arum said to Yahoo Sports. “What the [expletive] business did Berto have in there in the ring against Mayweather? None. It’s the same as if we had put Pacquiao in the ring with Broner. What the [expletive]? We’d never do that. It makes no sense.”

It is difficult to buy into Arum’s comparison of Andre Berto (30-4, 23 KOs) to Broner, because there are huge differences between the two fighters. Broner is currently a world champion, has a large fans base, good punching power, excellent defensive skills, and a great deal of charisma.

The 32-year-old Berto is a fighter with four defeats in his last seven fights, with an inflated ranking, and with diminishing boxing skills. Further, Berto does not appear to have the fan base that Broner has going for him right now, and he does not pull in the ratings that Broner does.

Some boxing fans believe the 84-year-old Arum had Broner ruled out as an opponent for Pacquiao simply because Broner has Al Haymon as his adviser. It is no secret that Arum and Haymon are not the best of friends right now, and that’s likely not going to change anytime soon. These fans believe that Arum chose not to let Pacquiao fight Broner because he’s with Haymon rather than him not being a good option for Pacquiao.

I think Broner would have been a better fight for Pacquiao than Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs), who is simply too small at 5’6”, and far too weak to do anything. Arum believes that Bradley is improved as a fighter with new trainer Teddy Atlas, but I saw the same Bradley as he’s always been in his first and only fight under Atlas’ guidance last November against Arum fighter Brandon Rios. Bradley won that fight by a 9th round knockout, but he was facing a poor fighter in Rios.

Instead of Arum matching Bradley against a good welterweight like Shawn Porter, Errol Spence Jr, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan or Keith Thurman, Arum stuck Bradley in with a bloated former lightweight in Rios. It was little more than a showcase fight for Bradley, as Rios had already been badly schooled by Pacquiao two years ago in a terribly one-sided fight.

Arum asks the question about what business did Berto have in the ring with Mayweather. Well, the same question can be asked about Rios being in the ring with Bradley. At the time that Arum made the Bradley-Rios fight, Rios had lost two out of his last four fights. You can make an argument that Rios should have lost his fights to Diego Chaves and Richard Abril.

Having seen both of those fights, I had Rios losing to Abril and he would have lost to Chaves if not for the referee Vic Drakulich stepping in and stopping the fight in the 9th round to disqualify Chaves for throwing a phantom elbow. Chaves was ahead on the scorecards with just one round to go, and the situation looked bleak for Rios. So we’re talking about a fighter that came into the Bradley fight with 4 defeats in his last 6 fights, with his only wins being against a mediocre Top Rank fighter named Mike Alvarado.

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Broner would have been a great choice for Pacquiao to fight, but I think the politics made the fight impossible. It’s too bad for the boxing fans, and most of all it’s too bad for Pacquiao, because I don’t believe that Arum is going to be able to sell a third fight between him and Bradley to the boxing public unless he slashes the pay-per-view asking price substantially.

If Arum sold the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 fight for $20, I think many boxing fans would pay to see it. Never the less, Arum will obviously not being doing that. The Pacquiao vs. Bradley 3 fight will likely go for $70 on PPV, and do poor numbers compared to the first two fights. The first Pacquiao-Bradley fight in 2012 brought in 700,000 PPV buys on HBO. The second fight in 2014 did 800,000 buys. I do not think it is going to work for Arum to use Bradley’s so-called improvement with new trainer Teddy Atlas as a vehicle to try to market the third fight. I see that as a fail.

The casual boxing fans won’t believe that Bradley is any different than the fighter that lost to Pacquiao twice before. The hardcore boxing fans obviously know what time it is, and realize that the only reason that Bradley won his last fight in an impressive fashion was because he was put in with Rios instead of a good welterweight. If Arum had matched Bradley with Thurman, Porter, Spence, Khan or Garcia, I think Bradley would have lost to all five of those guys, and he likely would have been knocked out by four of them.



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