By Chris Williams: Believe it or not, but Bob Arum is saying that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the main guy that he’s trying to get for his fighter Manny Pacquiao’s next fight.
It’s hard to believe that Arum is serious about wanting to match his star against Mayweather given all the excuses Arum has been making in the past couple of weeks about why the fight can’t be made on May 5th.
Arum said to RingTV “Floyd Mayweather is the Plan A. And one of those other four [Timothy Bradley, Miguel Cotto, Lamont Peterson and Juan Manuel Marquez] guys is the Plan B. Our first priority is to see if a Mayweather fight can be made, then everything else will still fall into place.”
Yeah, right; I’ll believe that when I see it. I highly doubt that Mayweather is the top priority but I hope Arum can surprise people by actually putting in a good effort to make the fight happen.
The fact that Arum is still talking about Mayweather tells me that Pacquiao must have told him that he wants the Mayweather fight next when Arum and Pacquiao met recently in the Philippines to pick out his next fight. However, just because Pacquiao may have told Arum to make the Mayweather fight doesn’t mean that he absolutely has to.
All Arum has to do is drag his feet and stall out the negotiations by saying this or that, and then he can come back to Pacquiao afterwards when the negotiations fail and say something like ‘See, I tried, but these people don’t want the fight.’ Arum can then go ahead and match Pacquiao up with the fighter that he previously had designs on, someone like Top Rank fighter Miguel Cotto or Timothy Bradley.
Erik Morales targeting Juan Manuel Marquez
WBC light welterweight champion Erik Morales (52-7, 36 KO’s) is looking to take on Juan Manuel Marquez (52-6-1, 39 KO’s) in 2012 if Morales can first get by #1 World Boxing Council challenger Danny Garcia (22-0, 14 KO’s) on March 24th in Houston, Texas.
Morales has been dreaming of a fight with Marquez since last year, no doubt realizing how much attention and money can be made with this fight. It sounds like a great fight, right? Well, Marquez has been cool to the idea because he’s more interested in facing IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson or WBO champion Timothy Bradley, both of whom are considered better than the 35-year-old Morales by a lot of boxing fans.
Morales seems to be making a big mistake of looking past an opponent by eying a fight with Marquez. Morales has a lot on his plate to worry about with the 23-year-old unbeaten Garcia in March and he’s more than good enough to beat Morales unless he’s able to pull out some of his old magic from the past to beat this guy. I personally see Morales losing this fight, and once he’s beaten, he can pretty much forget all about a fight against Marquez.
He’s not going to get him to take the fight with him just for the sake of putting together an old timers fight. Marquez is more focused on trying to get a big money rematch with Manny Pacquiao. Morales needs to try and beat Garcia and then start looking at what’s next instead of the other way around.
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