By Chris Williams: In the latest news involving Bob Arum making excuses for why he can’t match Manny Pacquiao up with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 5th, Arum is now saying he can’t make the fight because the MGM Arena, where Mayweather wants to fight on May 5th, is simply too small and inadequate for the fight.
It’s more than big enough for Mayweather, but not for Arum. So rather than match Pacquiao up with Mayweather and make huge money off of pay per view sales for the fight, Arum will focus on his original plan of matching Pacquiao up against one of four fighters he’s personally picked out. Arum is now saying that the fight is a possibility at the end of May.
However, it’s unclear whether Mayweather will want to take a risk of waiting until the end of the month to take the fight when he’s scheduled to start serving out his 90 day jail sentence on June 1st. Arum pushing the fight until the very end of the month is like saying ‘no, we’re not interested in fighting you.’ Can you imagine Mayweather fighting on May 31st and having to go to jail in the morning to start doing his time? Good one, Arum.
Arum said to the Los Angeles Times “May 5 is out for us. It can’t happen because we want to explore the idea of getting a stadium/arena up on the streets of Las Vegas that can seat 40,000. The end of May is a possibility.”
It almost sounds like Arum is seeing this as a unilateral thing where he calls the shots instead of it being a mutual thing. That kind of thing might work when you’re dealing with guys that Pacquiao has a big advantage over in terms of popularity and pull, but Pacquiao and Arum can’t call shots in a fight against Mayweather. It’s going to be a democratic decision, not one guy making the rules and saying this is how it’s going to be.
Arum earlier was taking about Pacquiao’s cut as being the reason why Pacquiao couldn’t fight Mayweather on May 5th. The cut occurred last November and Arum doesn’t think Pacquiao would be ready to fight after six months of healing. I wonder how long he thinks Pacquiao needs for a small cut to heal? Arum doubts whether Pacquiao will be ready to start sparring for a fight against Mayweather in the early part of April and things that he may need to wait until the end of the month to begin sparring, meaning that a fight against Mayweather couldn’t occur until the end of May. An there it is again, Arum putting Mayweather right up to near the date where he starts serving his jail sentence.
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