By Chris Williams: With Manny Pacquiao coming off of a win against Brandon Rios last November that brought in embarrassingly low pay-per-view numbers in the 475,000 range, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has three candidates – Juan Manuel Marquez, Tim Bradley and Ruslan Provodnikov – that he hopes will help give his PPV buys a boost when he fights next on April 12th in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Arum has already opted not to put Pacquiao’s fight in Asia, so in theory that might mean improved PPV buys. But of course you just can’t really know because the the poor numbers from Pacquiao’s last fight might have been the result of Arum choosing Rios instead of quality opponent with a fan base. Picking Rios was a pretty poor decision, and you can’t expect boxing fans to have wanted to see a mismatch like that.
According to the LA Times, Arum has just three guys he’s picking from for Pacquiao’s next fight and really we’re just two – Bradley and Provodnikov – because Marquez has already made it clear he’s not interested in fighting Pacquiao ever again. He’s had four fights with Manny and he doesn’t want to bother fighting him again. But I guess Arum doesn’t want to give up so easily because the last Pacquiao-Marquez fight drew 1.1 million buys.
When it comes down to it, Marquez is really the only guy in Arum’s Top Rank stable that he can count on to consistently bring in 1 million PPV buys each time he faces him. But Marquez said that he wants a 50-50 purse split if he ever fights Pacquiao again, and that pretty much will be the kiss of death for the fight happening.
Arum and Pacquiao aren’t likely going to bump up the 25 percent purse split that Marquez got last time he fought Pacquiao to 50 percent. That won’t happen. What we’ll see instead of Pacquiao fighting Bradley or Provodnikov next. It’ll be those guys in the next two fights for Pacquiao, and then likely more rematches with Pacquiao fighting them again one after another. It’s not as if Arum has anyone else to match Pacquiao with after Bradley and Provodnikov. Unless Arum wants to bring Mike Alvarado into a fight against Pacquiao, but that would be a terrible fight.
I can’t say Arum won’t do it because I never thought he would match Rios and Joshua Clottey with Pacquiao with both coming off of losses, but Arum did. So, Alvarado is definitely someone we could see Pacquiao in the ring with in the near future after he faces Bradley and Provodnikov for whatever amount of times Arum wants to match them against him. After Alvarado, it’s anyone’s guess who Pacquiao would be facing after that. Probably Rios again after Arum has built Rios back up with some soft opposition. Arum doesn’t have a big stable of fighters around the 140-147 lb. division, so retreads are likely what we’ll be seeing a lot of for Pacquiao in terms of opposition.
Comments are closed.