By Allan Fox: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he has a long list of potential alternative opponents to draw from for WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao’s next fight in November.
If 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez, Arum’s No.1 option for Pacquiao’s next fight, rejects the fight, Arum has other guys that he’ll be picking from. Arum already mentioned Ruslan Provodnikov as one possible option for Pacquiao, but apparently Arum has other options.
“We have lots of names, list and list of names,” Arum said via sports.inquirer.net.
Arum is also talking about Pacquiao’s next purse could be higher than his previous fights. Pacquiao has been making in the $20 million range in guaranteed purses. Arum sees that number going up. “It goes up from there, somewhere between $20 million to $30 million.”
The extra money presumably will come from fighting in Macao, China, because Pacquiao’s U.S pay-per-view numbers likely won’t go up if he doesn’t fight Marquez. If Arum matches him against Ruslan Provodnikov or one of his other Top Rank stable fighters like Jessie Vargas, Pacquiao’s PPV buys will likely plummet to where they were for his fight against Brandon Rios, which drew only 475,000 buys.
Arum has been talking about potentially matching Pacquiao against Golden Boy Promotions fighters Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Amir Khan, but those fights, if they ever happen, are potential fights in 2015. Initially, Arum included Khan’s name as a potential opponent for Pacquiao in 2015, but the last time Arum spoke he said that Canelo was the one that he wanted. But with Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach saying that Canelo would have to agree to a catch-weight of 150 lbs. in order for him to take the fight, it’s likely that a Canelo-Pacquiao will never happen. Canelo is struggling to make the junior middleweight limit now, and he hasn’t fought at that weight since last September when he came in at 152 for a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Arum’s list of possible opponents for Pacquiao’s November fight has to be rather small if Marquez declines the fight. It helps Arum if Provodnikov thinks there are other options for Pacquiao besides himself, because it would likely make negotiating the fight a lot easier if he’s the one that is picked out as a plan B option.
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