By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao was hoping to take a risky tune-up fight in April outside of the United States in one of three Asian countries. It does without saying that this would have been a risky fight for the Filipino for him to be coming back so quickly after his 6th round knockout defeat by Juan Manuel Marquez last December.
However, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum looked into the feasibility of staging a fight in Asia and he quickly came back with a big ‘No’ for Pacquiao because of scheduling issues in his preferred spot in Macau.
Instead of looking into other venues inside of those countries, Arum appears to have given up and says he wants Pacquiao to get examined by the Cleveland clinic in Las Vegas, Nevada and rest up for a September rematch against Marquez.
That’s the fight that Arum really wants. But he may have done Pacquiao a huge favor by shutting down any talk of Pacquiao fighting a tune-up bout in April, because Pacquiao might have been hurt had he taken that tune-up. He needs to rest and recover from his knockout loss to Marquez, and if he rushed back out to fight in April, we could have seen Pacquiao get knocked out again, and that would make it pretty much impossible for Arum to sell a Pacquiao-Marquez 5 rematch in September.
Pacquiao has already walked away from one opponent that beat him in Tim Bradley, but he can’t keep doing this. Boxing fans would be wondering why Pacquiao’s not fighting the guy that beat him in April instead of moving onto face Marquez in the bigger money fight. As such, the way Arum shut down Pacquiao’s April tune-up fight is really doing Pacquiao and Arum a potential favor by protecting the Filipino from possibly getting hurt in the ring.
It’s still too early to know for sure whether Marquez messed Pacquiao’s head up when he knocked him completely unconscious last month at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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