By Chris Williams: If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum expects to have leverage for a future fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr., then this Saturday’s fight between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey will have to do really well in terms of Pay-Per-View buys. The reason is because if the fight sells poorly to the boxing public, it could make it harder for Arum to get a better financial deal for Pacquiao when it comes to setting up a fight against the unbeaten Mayweather. This, of course, is contingent upon Mayweather beating 38-year-old Shane Mosley on May 1st.

Most people expect Mayweather to win that fight. If Mayweather looks sensational in beating Mosley, and Pacquiao struggles against Clottey, then it will be doubly hard for Arum to get the kind of deal that he’d like to get for his fighter Pacquiao.

Let’s be clear, Pacquiao’s numbers haven’t been as good as Mayweather’s against the same fighters. Mayweather’s fight against De La Hoya picked up 2.4 million pay per view buys, his fight against Marquez 1.05 million PPV buys and his fight against Hatton 850,000 PPV buys. In contrast, Pacquiao-De La Hoya only picked up 1.25 million PPV buys, his fight against Hatton 830,000 PPV buys and Marquez 400,000 PPV buys.

In every case, Mayweather has done better than Pacquiao in pay per view buys. If yet another fight of Mayweather’s does better than Pacquiao, it could make things much tougher to put together a fight against Mayweather unless Arum and Pacquiao are willing to give into to whatever demands – both financial and with Olympic style random blood testing – that Mayweather wants. Arum could have helped Pacquiao out in this situation by finding a better opponent than Clottey.

Even though the WBO sanctioning body has Clottey ranked number #1 in their welterweight rankings, this doesn’t translate into being number #1 with fan interest. You might as well rank Clottey as number 100 in terms of boxing fan interest in the United States, because most fans have never even heard of the guy. Unless this was a mandatory defense, which it isn’t in this case, Arum should have found Pacquiao a more popular fighter that could draw fans and get more interest.

By doing that, Arum would have ensured that Pacquiao got sensational PPV numbers and in turn this would help Pacquiao and Arum when it comes to making a fight with Mayweather in the future. Picking Clottey might have helped Arum in the short term to make good money, because after all, Clottey fights for Arum’s company Top Rank like Pacquiao does, meaning Arum wouldn’t have to share promotional money with another promoter.

However, I think it hurts Pacquiao because the Pacquiao-Clottey fight might not bring in big enough numbers for it to even come close to the Mayweather-Mosley PPV numbers. This will no doubt give Mayweather a big bargaining chip when it comes to negotiations with Pacquiao and Arum. This puts more pressure on Pacquiao to really dominate Clottey on Saturday and try to stop him in an impressive manner.

Despite what Pacquiao’s outspoken trainer Freddie Roach has been saying about Pacquiao likely stopping Clottey, Pacquiao could end up having a lot of problems with Clottey and could take a lot of punishment in the fight even while winning the fight. Clottey will be bigger by at least 10 to 20 pounds on the night of the fight with hand speed that is almost as good as Pacquiao’s.

With his size, power and defense, Clottey could make it very hard for Pacquiao to get his victory. That won’t be good for Pacquiao, because he needs to get Clottey out as fast as he can to avoid taking punishment from him.