By Chris Williams: In an interview of Top Rank promoter Bob Arum by Greg Leon of Boxing Talk Arum says when asked about the undercard of last Saturday’s Pacquiao-Clottey fight at the Cowboy Stadium “I thought the undercard fights were very good. I thought the Soto-Diaz fight was a very good fight. I thought the crowd was into it and I thought it was closer than the scorecards had it. I thought Duddy performed very well against a tough Mexican. Unfortunately Castillo came up empty and retired, but I think it was a strong undercard.”

What Arum says runs counter to what a lot of boxing fans are saying about Saturday’s undercard fights? I myself thought it was one of the weakest cards I’ve seen for a major pay-per-view bill. Ignoring the little known prospects that Arum had on the very bottom of the card, we had John Duddy defeating Michael Medina by a 10 round decision, Humberto Soto winning a 12 round decision over David Diaz, and Alfonso Gomez stopping former WBC lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo after the 5th round of a one-sided fight.

Of all the fights on the entire card, only the Duddy-Medina fight seemed interesting and the excitement of that fight was taken away, at least for me, because I felt like I was watching two second tier fighters going at it rather than top level guys. Oddly enough, both Duddy and Medina are ranked in the top 15. Overall, the undercard lacked depth and any real exciting fights.

Soto fought carefully against Diaz and boxed his way to a decision. It was a dull fight from the start and only got worse in the last four rounds when Soto went into cruise control and seemed to not even fight hard. He didn’t need, because Diaz was below his level. And the Castillo-Gomez fight was really sad to watch, because Castillo couldn’t let his punches go during the fight and looked like a shell of his former self. It was really one-sided fight and it many people thought it was going to be that as soon as the fight was announced.

On another topic, Arum reveals that Floyd Mayweather Jr. won’t be able to count having Manny Pacquiao take the random blood tests if he plans on fighting him in the near future. Arum says “If Mayweather wins, we certainly want to fight Mayweather, but he’s got to come to the table looking to make a regular boxing contract. We’re not going to entertain any extra issues regarding drug testing.”