By Dan Ambrose: Promoter Bob Arum thinks that Floyd Mayweather Jr. isn’t serious about wanting to face his fighter Manny Pacquiao on May 5th, and sees it as merely game playing on Mayweather’s part to give himself cover for the eventual backlash that he’ll be receiving once he does make an announcement as to who his next opponent will be.
Mayweather has expressed interest in facing WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next, but it doesn’t look as if Arum is going to let him have him, saying to the Manila Standard “They [Golden Boy Promotions and Mayweather] are not going to get him [Cotto].”
How Arum will block that fight is the question, since Cotto is no longer under contract with Top Rank and is only fighting for them on a fight to fight basis. Arum either will be selecting Cotto for Pacquiao next in June or he’s got some kind of contract options that are still tying Cotto to Top Rank.
Arum wants to not only put Cotto in with Pacquiao in the near future, but he also wants to set him up with a fight against WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. after he faces Marco Antonio Rubio next month.
So you can see, Arum doesn’t want Cotto’s marketing value to be tarnished by having him fight Mayweather and likely get schooled and beaten badly. He wants Cotto to be still as he is now, looking good off of three consecutive wins over the beatable guys – 38-year-old Ricardo Mayorga, Yuri Foreman and Antonio Margarito – that Arum has put Cotto in with.
It’s too bad that Cotto won’t be fighting Mayweather because that would have been an excellent fight. Cotto has good power, a great jab and with his new style of fighting, he would make it interesting for a while until Mayweather figured him out.
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