By Chris Williams: Promoter Bob Arum thinks the November 13th bout between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito can bring in 70,000 boxing fans to see this fight at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. In an article at the Dallas news, Arum says “I think we could look to do 70,000 people. [Joshua] Clottey had no fan base. Margarito has a huge fan base of Mexican-Americans.” I don’t know about that. I agree with Arum about Clottey having no fan base, which makes it seem all the crazier that Arum selected Clottey as Pacquiao’s last opponent last March rather than opting to fight a much more popular fighter than him. But that’s beside the point. I think Arum has picked another Clottey-type opponent with 32-year-old Margarito, a fighter who still doesn’t even have a boxing license to fight in the United States.

That may or may not be taken care of by the Texas Athletic Commission now that Margarito has applied to them. But as far as numbers go, I really don’t see this as an attractive fight that boxing fans will be willing to travel great distances to see. Unless Arum is expecting to pull in 50,000 to 60,000 Mexican fans from the nearby area just to see Margarito fight, I think the fight may end up doing worse than the Clottey fight. At the most, I think it might bring in 50,000 but that would take a ton of marketing to make it possible.

Things aren’t helped that Margarito still doesn’t have his boxing license and Arum can’t even begin to market the fight until that happens. Margarito has been turned down by the California and Nevada Athletic Commissions already in his attempt to get a boxing license, but Arum seems to think that the Texas will grant him his license.

One advantage that Margarito has is there won’t be a meeting between him and the Commission. They won’t grill him, in other words. In Texas, the Commission doesn’t meet with the fighters and just decide on the application without any face to face meeting. That’s obviously a good thing for Margarito, because sometimes when you get a group of people together, they can gang up on a person and work him over.

But if Margarito does get his license to fight in Texas, I still have my doubts about whether Arum made the right decision in picking Margarito out as Pacquiao’s next opponent rather than a more popular fighter. Arum has the advantage in that Pacquiao is one of the most popular boxers in the world. Arum can pretty much match him against anyone and he’ll end up doing really well on the fight. But if Arum matches him against one of his own Top Rank fighters, he does even better by serving both of his fighters without having to negotiate with another promoter.

But you have to wonder whether a Pacquiao vs. Margarito bout will bring in the kind of numbers that Arum thinks it will. 70,000 fans is a lot of people to come and see what many boxing fans already see as a gross mismatch. At least when Pacquiao fought Miguel Cotto last year, a lot of people thought Cotto had a chance to win. I don’t know of anyone that thinks that Margarito will win. Arum is expecting people to pay a lot of money by traveling all the way to Texas to see a fight that may not last more than five or six rounds.

I think this isn’t the fight opponent for Arum to get the kinds of numbers that he’s talking about, and the location isn’t a desirable one. Maybe it is for Margarito’s Mexican fans, but I think Arum is overestimating how popular Margarito is. He’s not as popular as Juan Manuel Marquez, that’s for sure. That’s someone that Arum could be matching against Pacquiao in this fight but chooses not to, saying that Marquez has to prove himself by beating Clottey or Andre Berto before he’ll allow Pacquiao to fight him.