By Chris Williams: According to examiner.com, Bob Arum is going to leave it up to Manny Pacquiao to determine if he wants to fight Arum’s stable fighter former WBA World lightweight champion Brandon Rios after Pacquiao’s fight with 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez next month on December 8th. The World Boxing Organization has ordered a fight between #4 WBO Rios and #2 WBO Ruslan Provodnikov. However, Arum won’t make that fight if Rios prefers the Pacquiao fight and Pacquiao agrees to face Rios, according to interview of Arum by Chris Robinson at examiner.com.

It’s pretty obvious that Rios wants the fight with Pacquiao, and it’s highly unlikely that he would have any interest in fighting the Russian Provodnikov, who doesn’t have a large fan base in the U.S. The question is will Pacquiao be interested in fighting Rios after the Marquez fight? I’m sure Arum will make it known to Pacquiao what he himself prefers and he’ll obviously lay out the projected pay per view numbers a fight between the Mexican American Rios would draw in a fight against Pacquiao. Rios isn’t from Mexico, but he’d possibly be able to attract the Mexican fans in the U.S, even though he’s not a star or anything close to being a star.

Rios is about as popular as past Pacquiao opponent Tim Bradley in the U.S, and probably isn’t much more popular than Provodnikov. However, Arum could likely sell the fight with help from HBO with their 24/7 series, and the Mexican fans would likely fall in behind Rios.

It would be a nice little mismatch. Rios is low, has little defensive skills, and was already exposed earlier this year in gift decision by the Mayweather-like Richard Abril. However, Arum was able to have Rios redeem himself in his last fight, albeit not against Abril, by putting him in with one of his Top Rank stable fighters Mike Alvarado. Beating Alvarado won Rios a lot of fan support, and they seem to have forgotten how poor Rios looked in getting badly schooled by Abril.

A Rios-Pacquiao fight would take place next April, and of course it would be PPV. It’s hard to imagine paying to see Rios, at least for me. I see him as kind of an undercard fighter and I would never think of paying a dime to see him fight but he’s one of Arum’s fighters so he’ll probably get the fight. Rios hasn’t fought Pacquiao yet, and Arum has already exhausted most of his Top Rank stable fighters around 147 in putting them in with Pacquiao. So I guess it’s Rio’s turn now.