By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says his number one money maker former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) would fight WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) at 155lbs if that fight happens, Arum says he and Pacquiao couldn’t try and get the 25-year-old Canelo to come down in weight to fight because he feels it would be unfair to him by asking him to do this.
Pacquiao is supposedly retiring after his third fight against Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) on April 9 on HBO pay-per-view. However, with the way that Arum seemed to get really energized when asked about a hypothetical fight between Pacquiao and Canelo, it seems only obvious that the 84-year-old Arum REALLY wants that fight to happen.
You can get that if Arum is able to get De La Hoya giving him the green light for such a fight, Arum would be able to convince Pacquiao to take the Canelo fight. It would be a huge send off for Pacquiao because it’s a fight that would likely generate more than 2 million pay-per-view buys. I don’t think it would bring in the 4.4 million buys that Pacquiao’s fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. brought in last May, but it would definitely have a good chance of breaking 2 million buys. It would be Pacquiao’s second biggest pay-per-view fight of his career easily.
“No, Manny’s always fought bigger guys. Didn’t he fight [Antonio] Margarito?” said Arum to Fighthype.com about the weight not being a problem for a potential Pacquiao vs. Canelo fight. “He [Canelo] wouldn’t come down. He couldn’t come down. You don’t want a fighter to come down just to make a fight where he trains himself physically. It would be unfair to get Canelo to come down in weight. If Manny wants to fight him, he’s got to bite the bullet and fight the heavier guy. Oscar [De La Hoya] promotes Canelo, and Oscar knows when Manny fights a bigger guy how dangerous Manny is, because Oscar knows from experience what happened to him when he fought Manny,” said Arum.
There’s a lot of things that could potentially get in the way of a Pacquiao-Canelo fight to keep it from taking place. Pacquiao could lose his next fight against Bradley, which is quite possible given the improvements that Bradley has made in his game under new trainer Teddy Atlas.
Canelo could lose his May 7 title defense against Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs). That’s a fight that Canelo is supposed to win, but as bad as he looked against Mayweather in 2013, it’s possible that Canelo could struggle with Khan’s hand and foot speed. Canelo also could elect to fight Gennady Golovkin in September. Canelo must fight Golovkin, the interim WBC middleweight title, if he wants to hold onto his WBC title.
If Canelo chooses to vacate his WBC title, then some boxing fans are going to see him a ducker for choosing not to fight Golovkin. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya might be able to convince him to vacate the WBC title in order to take the sure thing bigger payday against Pacquiao. That’s a fight that would likely bring in many more pay-per-view buys than a Canelo-Golovkin fight.
We’re probably talking about a difference of 1 million pay-per-views. Canelo vs. Golovkin would likely bring in 1 million buys. It’s a fight that would probably bring in a little more than the Canelo vs. Miguel Cotto fight, but not by a whole lot more. Golovkin doesn’t have a huge fan base yet with the casual boxing fans. Golovkin’s only been fighting in the U.S for four or five years and that’s not enough to build a huge fan base like Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
If Golovkin had already fought someone with a huge name like Mayweather, then he’d have many more fans right now if he’d won a fight like that. But the problem that Golovkin has right now is he hasn’t yet had one big fight during his career. His biggest fight of his career was his fight against former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux last October.
Lemieux wasn’t a big enough name to increase Golovkin’s popularity by a huge margin to turn him into a PPV attraction. Golovkin needs bigger names to get him to the next level, and guys like Lemieux, Willie Monroe and Martin Murray aren’t going to do that for him.
If Arum wants Pacquiao to fight Canelo, then he’s going to need to make sure Pacquiao wins his next fight against Bradley. Arum will also need to talk to Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions to talk him into having Canelo take the fight. Canelo probably won’t need much convincing once De La Hoya tells him that he would need to vacate his WBC title immediately in order to take the fight with Pacquiao.
I get the feeling that Canelo isn’t too thrilled at the idea of fighting Golovkin. A fight against Pacquiao would give Canelo the perfect excuse to avoid the Golovkin fight. Canelo wouldn’t even need to play the catch-weight game by saying that Golovkin didn’t want to fight him at 155.
Canelo would only need to say he had a bigger opportunity to fight for big money against Pacquiao, and his boxing fans would totally understand. Once De La Hoya lets Canelo know how many PPV buys a fight against Pacquiao would bring in, I think Canelo would be vacating his WBC title in the next second. I see Canelo as more of a business type fighter rather than someone who fights to accomplish things in the sport. I see Canelo jumping at the chance to fight Pacquiao, especially if it means he doesn’t have to fight Golovkin.
The hardest part of making the Pacquiao-Canelo fight will be Arum needing to talk Pacquiao into taking that fight. Pacquiao is talking seriously about wanting to retire after the Bradley fight on April 9. Arum will need to be able to talk Pacquiao into holding off on his retirement for one last fight against Canelo.
I think the 84-year-old Arum will have success at doing this. The money that Pacquiao will make will be huge because he’ll likely get a bigger cut of the revenue compared to the one he got for his fight against Mayweather last year in May 2015. Of course, if Pacquiao is successful at beating Canelo, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Arum talking Pacquiao into fighting Canelo again or some other star fighter.
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