By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum met with his fighter Manny Pacquiao last Thursday to discuss both the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight negotiations and a potential plan-B option for him if they’re unable to successfully negotiate the fight with Mayweather, according to The Las Vegas Review Journal.
Arum isn’t saying who the plan-B guy will be for Pacquiao, but the rumors are that it’s going to be one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Jessie Vargas, the WBA light welterweight champion.
With Vargas as the likely backup plan, it’s even more important than ever for Arum to try and iron out a deal with Mayweather for the Pacquiao fight. A Pacquiao-Vargas fight is basically a duplicate of Pacquiao’s last fight against the little known, light hitting Chris Algieri. That fight was rumored to have brought in just a little over 300,000 pay-per-view buys, which is the lowest total that Pacquiao has received in a pay-per-view bout in many, many years.
A fight between Pacquiao and Vargas would almost surely need to be staged in Macau, China, because it wouldn’t be a fight that would likely sellout an arena in the United States unless Arum were to move it to a small hall.
Arum could maybe get a big site fee from one of the casino’s in Macau, and he could then stick the Pacquiao vs. Vargas fight. It’s horrible fight, and Arum would obviously be making a big mistake if he were to pick Vargas as Pacquiao’s opponent instead of going outside his Top Rank stable to find someone that is at least slightly known by casual boxing fans in the U.S. Vargas is pretty much completely unknown by casual fans, even though he’s been on the undercard of Pacquiao’s fights in the past.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight needs to get made, and Arum should resist all temptation to pull Pacquiao out of the negotiations with Mayweather in order to rush him into a fight against Vargas or whoever else that Arum can dig up as the plan-B. Boxing fans want to see the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight, and this may be the last chance for them to see it. Mayweather will likely retire in 2016, so it’s either make the fight now or later in the year.
With Pacquiao being so vulnerable to getting knocked out and out-boxed by movers, he could be at risk of losing to even a guy like Vargas. That’s why Arum needs to make the fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao now rather than trying to put it together later.
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