By Chris Williams: Showtime Vice President Stephen Espinoza wants to help put the wheels in motion for a Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout that he can televise on Showtime. Mayweather Jr. has four fights left in his 6-fight contract with Showtime, and Espinoza wants to maximize the impact of those last four fights by trying to get the two promotional companies Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions to work on a deal. Espinoza says he’s going to contact Top Rank’s Bob Arum again to see if he can get him interested in the fight.
Espinoza told Lance Pugmire of the LA Times “I haven’t tried in a while. I will call Arum. This is an enticing enough opportunity to do it.”
According to Pugmire, Espinoza has contacted Arum in the past to try and put the fight together, yet Arum said “I know of no calls [from Espinoza] has made to me or my secretary in two years.”
If Arum is saying that he’s not been getting phone calls from Espinoza in the past and with Espinoza saying that he’s been calling him, it’s not a good sign that the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight can be made. If Espinoza has been in fact calling Arum and he’s saying there’s been no calls, that might mean that Arum isn’t ready to let Pacquiao fight Mayweather.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer has said in the past that Arum will never let Pacquiao fight Mayweather until it’s the last fight of Pacquiao’s career because he’ll have nothing to lose at that point if Mayweather was to dominate him for 12 rounds.
It’s probably not in Arum’s best interest to let Pacquiao fight Mayweather fight now because Pacquiao looked good in his last fight in beating one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters in Brandon Rios, and Arum can probably string this out a lot time with Pacquiao beating his stable fighters one after another for another 3 years or so. If Arum were to match Pacquiao up against Mayweather right now, it would make a lot of money for him and Pacquiao, but it would also potentially hurt the gravy train if Pacquiao gets clowned by Mayweather in a one-sided loss. That would be Pacquiao’s 3 defeat in his last 4 fights, and it might hurt his pay-per-view numbers moving forward. But if Arum instead matches Pacquiao exclusively against his Top Rank fighters in in-house fights, Pacquiao can make big money without much risk because Arum doesn’t really have much to offer in terms of good fighters in his stable.
There’s Tim Bradley, Mike Alvarado, and Brandon Rios. Ruslan Provodnikov has one fight for Arum, and Juan Manuel Marquez is tired of fighting Pacquiao over and over again, and he doesn’t want to fight him anymore. If all Arum has to offer Pacquiao for the next three years is Rios, Alvarado and Bradley, Pacquiao can probably sweep the table for the next three years even as he ages. But things would be much different if Arum were to put Pacquiao in with Mayweather, because he’s probably dominate Pacquiao in a one-sided fight, and from there we might see Pacquiao’s PPV numbers drop off considerably once Arum puts him in with Bradley, Rios and Alvarado to have him possibly fight over and over again for the next three years.
Just having Mayweather on the horizon for Arum and Pacquiao to name drop, it’s got to make Pacquiao’s PPV fights against the likes of Bradley, Rios, Provodnikov and Alvarado much bigger than they normally would be.