Arum: Mayweather is just posturing; he already agreed to fight Guerrero on May 5th

By Boxing News - 01/11/2012 - Comments

Image: Arum: Mayweather is just posturing; he already agreed to fight Guerrero on May 5thBy Jason Kim: While the rest of the world thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. is sincerely interested in fighting Manny Pacquiao on May 5th, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum isn’t one of them.

Arum says that Mayweather is going to be fighting two-world champion Robert Guerrero (29-1-1, 18 KO’s) on May 5th and is just using the Pacquiao twitter messages to try and lessen the heat he’ll be getting when fans realize he’s facing Guerrero rather than Pacquiao.

Arum told the Manila Standard “They [Mayweather] have already agreed to fight Robert Guerrero on May 5th. They feel that if they blame Manny and myself for the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight not happening and therefore they are fighting Guerrero and that somehow the public will excuse them and buy the Mayweather-Guerrero fight. That is stupid. Nobody is going to by the fight unless they believe it’s a good fight…makes absolutely no sense. They should spend their bullets somehow making a case as to why Guerrero is a dangerous fighter.”

Wow! If that’s true then Mayweather is just using Pacquiao and Arum to get the heat off of him for taking the Guerrero fight on Cinco de Mayo rather than putting in the effort to fight Pacquiao. Arum says that he’s still not been contacted by Mayweather or his management representatives, and that’s a pretty clear sign that Mayweather might not be interested in fighting Pacquiao.

Another thing that makes you see Mayweather as not be being serious about a Pacquiao fight is that he reserved the small 16,800 MGM Grand Arena on May 5th, the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo. That tells you that Mayweather is expecting to fight a Mexican fighter like Guerrero or Saul Alvarez on that date rather than Pacquiao, a Filipino.

There has been no word about Mayweather talking with Alvarez, but there has been with Guerrero. I think Arum is right about this. I think Mayweather is just trying to take the heat off of himself for the Guerrero fight so he won’t get criticized for choosing an opponent that doesn’t have a large fan base like Guerrero rather than facing Pacquiao.



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