By Jason Kim: Promoter Dan Goosen bristles at what Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is doing by keeping his fights in house by matching his fighters in his stable against each other rather than looking outside of his small stable for bigger fights that are better for the sport of boxing. Goosen also doesn’t like the idea of Arum matching Manny Pacquiao against Antonio Margarito, because Margarito still doesn’t even have a boxing license after losing it a year ago when a plaster like material was found on his hand wraps before his fight with Shane Mosley.
Goosen, who promotes the lanky 6’1” former welterweight champion Paul Williams, had this to say in an article at the Los Angeles Times: “I’d be a travesty to have Manny Pacquiao fight a guy [Antonio Margarito] whose license has been taken away. That would be hurtful to Manny’s reputation. Manny’s a great man, but there’s a lot of negative sentiment about Margarito and what he did. These are the things that are not good for our sport.” Arum seems to be ignoring the negative feedback that he’s getting about him matching Pacquiao against the disgraced Margarito.
However, this isn’t new to Arum. He took a lot of heat in March when the negotiations between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Pacquiao failed to result in an agreement. Instead of making the best of things by matching Pacquiao against the next available big star, Arum decided to put Pacquiao in with one of Arum’s fighters from his table Joshua Clottey. Arum still decided to put the fight on pay per view, despite Clottey not being a popular fighter with any real fan base in the United States. What resulted was a disappointing 700,000 PPV buys for the fight, which was half of the numbers that Floyd Mayweather received in his lopsided 12 round decision over Shane Mosley in May.
Mayweather-Mosley brought in 1.4 million buys for their fight. Had Arum matched Pacquiao up against a star instead of one of his least popular fighters from his stable, it would have likely sold at lead 1 million PPV buys instead of only 700,000. Now with Arum choosing the non-popular Margarito, another fighter in his table, as Pacquiao’s next opponent, we could be seeing the same identical numbers as the Pacquiao-Clottey fight.
Goosen had this to say about the chances of the Pacquiao-Margarito fight ending up outside the U.S.:
“How can he [Arum] take this fight against Margarito out of the country, like thieves in the night? Our sport needs to make the biggest and best fights possible, and without Mayweather, Paul Williams is the richest fight for Pacquiao that’s out there.” I agree with Goosen, but I also think Sergio Martinez is right up there with Paul Williams. But I also think Arum will never in this lifetime put Pacquiao in with those two fighters because he would probably lose. Williams and Martinez are better than Margarito and would be a huge problem for Pacquiao to deal with. I can see Pacquiao getting beaten up in both fights. Arum won’t take that chance to see the gravy train end like that. After Pacquiao beats Margarito, he’ll either fight a rematch with Top Rank fighter Miguel Cotto or possibly fight Mayweather. The Mayweather fight will depend on Pacquiao’s PPV numbers against Margarito.
Comments are closed.