De La Hoya: I told you Arum would do Bradley vs. Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 01/30/2012 - Comments

Image: De La Hoya: I told you Arum would do Bradley vs. PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: It looks as if Oscar De La Hoya’s prediction about Top Rank promoter Bob Arum matching Manny Pacquiao up with Timothy Bradley is about to come to fruition, as the 80-year-old Arum is talking about Bradley being the likely next fight for Pacquiao on June 9th in Arum’s four fighter tournament.

De La Hoya is gloating about him being right about seeing Arum make this move, but De La Hoya isn’t happy at all about this. He wanted to see Arum match Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr. but that’s not going to happen now. Arum has already said that Mayweather is out of the picture for Pacquiao and it looks like he’ll continue to be out of the picture for the remainder of 2012 due to Arum’s four fighter tournament.

De La Hoya said this on his twitter today: “I told you Bob will do Bradley vs. Manny. What a shame.”

This will be very sad news when this becomes official. Right now, Arum is still holding out hope that his fighter Miguel Cotto will agree to drain himself down to 147lbs in order for Arum to make a bigger fight between Pacquiao and Cotto in a rematch. But Cotto wants no part of the strength weakening 147lbs, as having already lost to Pacquiao in 2009 after he made the mistake of agreeing to a 145 pound catchweight fight that left Cotto with little energy to fight, resulting in Pacquiao beating him by a 12th round TKO. Cotto doesn’t want to absorb another beating like that, so he’s sticking to his principals and holding firm and wanting a fight with Pacquiao to take place at 150, which would be the halfway point between 147 and 154. Cotto fights at 154, and having to drain seven pounds down to 147 would be too much for him.

De La Hoya said “I swear to you when boxing is ready, I will bring you guys all the best fights boxing has to offer. In the mean time, we have to put up with Bob.”

It sounds like here that De La Hoya is saying that when Arum is gone from the earth, he’ll be able to put together the big fights by being able to have Golden Boy face Top Rank fighters. I think it’s kind of morbid to hint about stuff like that, but I really don’t think much will change when Arum is gone. He’s got his Todd Luboef that will be taking over for him I suppose, and if he continues with Arum’s blueprint in match his Top Rank fighters mostly against each other, then nothing will change at all. It’ll just be a different guy pulling the strings but with the same old tunes be churned out.



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