By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach, who trains WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, says that they’ll know within a week if Pacquiao will be fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. next on November 13th. If the fight doesn’t happen, then Roach, and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, will instead steer Pacquiao into a fight against another Top Rank fighter WBA light middleweight champion Miguel Cotto or former IBF/WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito for a fight at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas.
In an interview at 590 AM in Toronto,, Roach said “We’re [Pacquiao] going to fight November 13th against somebody, and me and Manny both hope that it’s Mayweather. We’re trying to make every benefit we can to make that happen. I talked to Bob Arum and he told me that he will know within a week if the deal is going to be done or not. Again, we obviously want Mayweather. He has a big mouth and we’re going to shut him up.”
Here we go again with Arum, Roach and Pacquiao about to walk out on negotiations prematurely and look in another direction. Instead of sticking it out and going the final yard to make the Mayweather fight happen, they will, judging the looks of things, be abandoning the negotiating soon in order to pick Cotto or Margarito to fight. This is pretty much what happened last time they tried to negotiate with Mayweather.
Everything was agreed on but the random blood testing. Mayweather wanted a 14 day cutoff and Pacquiao wanted 24 days. Instead of sticking it out a little longer and meeting halfway, Pacquiao, Arum and Roach instead chose Joshua Clottey to fight and ended up with mediocre pay per view numbers in a totally boring fight. Roach said that Clottey would be a more exciting fight than Mayweather.
Boy, was Roach ever wrong. You can bet that Cotto will be selected next for Pacquiao to fight if the Mayweather bout doesn’t get made. I don’t know about you, but I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Pacquiao demolish Cotto again, especially when it means that I would have pay to see it. Isn’t there anyone else that Pacquiao can be matched up against instead of fighting Cotto again?
That seems to lack inventiveness. It’s like making spaghetti one night and then choosing to make it again the next night, simply because you can’t come up with a better idea. If this is going to be Pacquiao’s last fight of his career, which I highly doubt, then doesn’t he deserve someone new for a change? Whatever. If they choose Cotto, then I hope they’re not surprised if the PPV numbers turn out to be less than they had hoped for.
Supposedly, Arum wants to get the Mayweather fight signed as soon as possible so that he can start marketing the fight to the public. However, I think it’s a ploy to put pressure on Mayweather to step up and sign quickly. For Mayweather not to have agreed with the terms of the negotiations thus far, it must be something in there that he still doesn’t like. July is about to start, and the fight won’t take place until mid November. I see this as a move by Arum to cause Mayweather to make a quick decision before he’s ready, and before he’s gotten what he wanted out of the negotiations.
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