By Chris Williams: Tank Rank promoter Bob Arum is hoping that the September 17th fight between WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be an exciting fight that does well. This isn’t what you normally expect from a rival promoter, because the Mayweather-Ortiz fight is a Golden Boy Promoted fight.
However, Arum doesn’t want the negative affects of a poor bout carrying over to his number #1 cash cow fighter Manny Pacquiao’s bout against 38-year-old lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez on November 12th.
Speaking with examiner.com, Arum said “If they [Mayweather vs. Ortiz] put on a good fight, a fight that the fans like, well then it helps us on November 12. If that fight is a stinker, then it will hurt us.”
It may not matter. The Pacquiao vs. Marquez fight might not draw huge numbers anyway. I expect it to do decent Pay per view numbers along the lines of a Joshua Clottey-Pacquiao bout, but not the numbers that Pacquiao got for his fight against the big and slow Antonio Margarito or the totally shot 39-year-old Shane Mosley. Those mismatches brought in big numbers because it involved arguably more popular fighters. Marquez, as great as he is, has never been a huge draw in the U.S.
It probably doesn’t matter how exciting the Mayweather-Ortiz fight will be, I can’t see it helping or hurting the Marquez vs. Pacquiao bout. That fight will bring in good but not great numbers because it’s just not a fight that is exciting the boxing world. Pacquiao needs to fight someone younger and in his own weight class instead of taking on a guy two divisions below him in Marquez and only giving him a three pound catch weight.
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