By Jim Dower: WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao is going to be fighting in November against someone. If not his preferred opponent Floyd Mayweather Jr., then it will possibly be against fellow Top Rank fighters Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito. The number #1 choice is Mayweather, but that fight will come down to whether or not Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum can successfully negotiate a deal with Mayweather for the fight.

Last time Pacquiao and Arum attempted to put a fight together with Mayweather, it went nowhere after Pacquiao didn’t want to have his blood tested within 24 days before the fight. This time there’s a much better chance of the fight being put together because Pacquiao has agreed to have his blood tested at 14 days before the fight with Mayweather, which is what Floyd previously asked for.

But that doesn’t mean that the fight negotiations will be a slam dunk this time, because Mayweather is going to want more this time. However, if the fight can’t be put together, Arum would like to put Pacquiao back in with Cotto in a rematch, as long as Cotto can get by Yuri Foreman on June 5th. Cotto was stopped in the 12th round by Pacquiao last November.

The fight brought in 1 million pay-per-view buys, a good number. A rematch between Cotto and Foreman would likely bring in at least 1 million PPV buys again, possibly a little less because boxing fans might not be interested in seeing the rematch given how one-sided the first fight was. However, it’s a win-win for Arum, because he will be promoting both Cotto and Pacquiao, so he won’t have to share the promotional duties with another outside promoter.

Arum will likely put the bout at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas, where it could sell at least 50,000 tickets. This is where Pacquiao fought his last fight against Joshua Clottey in March. A Cotto-Pacquiao fight could sell more than 50,000 tickets if Cotto’s East Coast fans are interested in traveling all the way to Texas to see the fight. Some will, obviously, but it would be asking a lot for fans to have to travel so far to see a fight that Cotto has little chance in winning. Under the ideal circumstances, it would be nice if Arum decided to match Pacquiao against someone else besides Cotto or Antonio Margarito.

Those are decent fights for Arum, but not really for boxing fans because neither Margarito nor Cotto are in the class of Pacquiao. For Pacquiao to be challenged, he needs to be put in with someone like Sergio Martinez or Paul Williams, but Pacquiao would probably never fight either of them. Pacquiao has said that he won’t fight the 5’11” Yuri Foreman, because he’s too tall for him.

However, Margarito is 5’11”, and Martinez is 5’10”, so it’s unclear what the hang-up is right there. Williams is 6’1”, and would be a very tough fight for Pacquiao. I can understand Pacquiao not wanting to fight Williams, but Martinez and Foreman seem like better choices than to see Pacquiao have to fight Margarito in Mexico, because he doesn’t have his license to box in the United States, or to watch Pacquiao beat up Cotto again.