Pacquiao-Bradley II fight could be announced this Friday, says Arum

By Boxing News - 01/23/2014 - Comments

pac673468By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he hopes to make an announcement this Friday on the completed Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley rematch for April 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ruslan Provodnikov has been ruled out for the fight with Pacquiao due to him not being as well known as Bradley, and without a world title at 147. Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz says that the WBO welterweight title that Bradley has really interests Pacquiao.

“I hope to have an announcement by tomorrow,” Arum said to RingTV about the Pacquiao-Bradley II rematch.

Bradley has a win over Pacquiao from 2012 that still needs to be avenged by the Filipino fighter. Bradley also just finished beat Pacquiao’s conqueror Juan Manuel Marquez last October in winning by a 12 round split decision. Bradley didn’t have to fight the same version of Marquez that Pacquiao did, but he still beat him none the less and that’s something that Pacquiao has never really done in his previous fights with Marquez. Pacquiao’s two wins and a draw against Marquez were all controversial with many boxing fans feeling Marquez won all three of those fights. But Bradley clearly beat Marquez and left no doubt in the minds of boxing fans.

Bradley’s not really a marketable fighter, but he’s clearly better known than Ruslan Provodnikov. It’s very unlikely that Bradly will be able to pull in many fans for the Pacquiao-Bradley rematch, and it’ll be lucky if it does as well as it did last time in drawing in the neighborhood of 900,000 PPV buys. Those numbers were a disappointment at the time of the fight because Pacquiao had been getting a lot more than that. But with Pacquiao’s last fight against Brandon Rios drawing 475,000 PPV buys, Arum would likely be quite happy if the fight brings in 900,000 buys a second time.

If the Bradley vs. Pacquiao II fight is competitive and brings in good PPV numbers on April 12th, then you can bet that Arum will trot Bradley back out for a third fight between them in September. Arum doesn’t really have anyone that he can count on to bring in a lot of PPV buys, so if their fight in April does well on April 12th, then you can expect Bradley back for another bout against Pacquiao.



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