By Dave Lahr: In tonight’s midnight media conference call with Bob Arum, he said what everyone pretty much already knows, that Floyd Mayweather Jr. missed his July 16th deadline to say whether he would agree to a fight with World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. Arum will now start looking at putting a fight together between Pacquiao and either Miguel Cotto or Antonio Margarito. Neither option is appealing, but that’s what we’re going to get.
It’s going to be a real let down for boxing fans to go from Maywether to either Cotto or Margarito. I wonder if Arum will put the fight on regular HBO instead of pay per view, because there may not be a lot of interest among fans in seeing Pacquiao beat up on Cotto again or take on a fighter that can’t get a boxing license in the United States.
Arum said that Ross Greenburg from HBO even tried to intervene and help with the negotiations, but no dice. It didn’t work. Maywether obviously has something that’s holding him back right now. Like Arum said, it could be that Floyd is concerned about whether his trainer Roger Mayweather will be able to make it to a fight this year because of some legal issues that he’s been dealing with. Mayweather might not want to fight without his longtime trainer in his corner. Arum is going to try again next year in May to put together a fight with Mayweather and Pacquiao, that is, if Pacquiao doesn’t get beaten in his next fight by Margarito or Cotto.
I can only imagine who Pacquiao will end up fighting after he gets through with Margarito and Cotto. Unless Pacquiao agrees to a smaller cut with Mayweather, I wouldn’t doubt that we could soon be seeing Pacquiao matched against fellow Top Rank fighter Julio Cesar Chavez. I mean there’s only so many times you can trot out Cotto to fight Pacquiao before fans lose interest altogether.
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