By Jason Kim: According to ABS-CBNNews, WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao is ready to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr., but if the fight can’t be put together, he is open to fighting rematches with Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto. Obviously, Pacquiao isn’t serious about wanting to fight Hatton again, because he seems to have been really effected by the loss to Pacquiao, hasn’t fought since being destroyed in the 2nd round by Pacquiao last year in May 2009, and has put on a great deal of weight.
The likely opponent that Pacquiao will be fighting is WBA junior middleweight champion Cotto, because he holds the World Boxing Association title and Pacquiao, a 7-time world champion, would have the chance to pick up an incredible 8th world title in as many divisions. That would be pretty special, even though some of those wins have come against less than the best fighters in those divisions.
Cotto isn’t considered the best fighter in the junior middleweight division but he does fight for the same promotional company as Pacquiao and he would likely bring in more money than a fight between Pacquiao and WBC junior middleweight champion Sergio Martinez. There’s no word as to when or if the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations will be completed. Oscar De La Hoya said this week that the negotiations are almost finalized but that means little because one thing can upset the whole negotiations like last time when Mayweather and Pacquiao were unable to agree to a blood cutoff for the drug testing.
Despite having agreed on everything else pertaining to purse split, gloves size, and weight penalty, the two fighters were unable to solve this one thing. If they aren’t able to come to an agreement this time, you will likely see Bob Arum quickly substitute his plan B opponent, which will likely be Cotto. It’s not something that a lot of fans want to see, but both Cotto and Pacquiao have big enough fan bases on their own to make this a fairly decent pay-per-view event along the lines of 1 million PPV buys.
It might come in a little less than that this time, because there’s less suspense now because Pacquiao already proved that he’s a lot better than Cotto by stopping him in the 12th round last November. It might not be a fight that boxing fans want to see, but if Mayweather is off the table, there are really not a whole lot of other options out there for Pacquiao unless he wants to fight some of the lesser stars.
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