By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s next fight is looking more and more like it’s going to be against fellow Top Rank fighter WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley, as that’s the guy that their promoter Bob Arum likes for Pacquiao’s next fight in June.
Arum says Floyd Mayweather Jr. isn’t in the running due to his request for a 50-50 deal, although he probably never seriously had a real chance in landing the Pacquiao fight the way that Arum seemed resistant to the idea of Pacquiao fighting him when it was learned that Mayweather’s 90-day jail term was postponed until June 1st. That was when Arum started coming up with different excuses on a daily basis for why Mayweather wasn’t a good option.
In the end, it looks as if Mayweather’s request for a 50-50 deal gave Arum all the excuses he needed not to make the fight. Also Miguel Cotto looks to be out of the picture for Manny as well, because Cotto doesn’t want to drain down all the way to a 147 and be too weak to fight.
Pacquiao isn’t at all interesting in giving him a tiny catchweight of 150lbs, so that leaves only Bradley. Lamont Peterson will be used by Arum to fight Juan Manuel Marquez in a fight sometime between April and July at the Cowboys’ stadium in Arlington, Texas as part of Arum’s four-fighter tournament with Bradley-Pacquiao & Peterson-Marquez.
Arum said this to RingTV “Does it look closer to being Bradley? It looks closer to being Bradley, obviously by elimination…What happens if Miguel Cotto comes back and says, ‘Okay, I’ll make the weight? [147]. That opens up another possibility, but right now, he’s saying that he wouldn’t. Floyd is out of the picture for May. He put himself out of the picture for May. Enough is enough. Any discussion with Floyd was over with Floyd when he said he couldn’t go for the 50-50 split.”
I don’t buy that for a second. Mayweather was always out of the picture but I can see how him asking for a bigger cut is the perfect excuse for Arum not to make the fight.
It’s going to be Bradley in one of the sickest of mismatches for Pacquiao in quite some time. Unlike the other guys that Arum has been spoon feeding Pacquiao, Bradley doesn’t have the size, speed or power going for him. He’s a tiny guy and Pacquiao will actually be the bigger fighter in this mismatch.
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