Arum interested in having Pacquiao fight in Dubai in 2016

By Boxing News - 05/28/2015 - Comments

Image: Arum interested in having Pacquiao fight in Dubai in 2016By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reportedly interested in having his top fighter in his stable Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) fight in Dubai in 2016. Arum is looking to open up Dubai as one of the areas that he stages boxing shows.

Having Pacquiao fight there is one of the best ways of making that a possibility. Pacquiao is still healing up from shoulder surgery, however. It’s not known at this point whether Pacquiao will even return to the ring or not. He’s still yet to make up his mind, but Arum must feel confident that he can convince him to continue fighting because he reportedly is interested in bringing him over to Dubai.

Thus far, Pacquiao has fought twice in Macau, China. The fights brought in underwhelming pay-per-view numbers though, and it’s debatable whether Arum made the right move in having Pacquiao fight over there. It would seem like it would have been a smarter move for Pacquiao to have had those fights – against Brandon Rios and Chris Algieri – in the United States in Las Vegas, Nevada or New York in order to take advantage of Pacquiao’s popularity there.

If Pacquiao agrees to fight in Dubai like Arum wishes, it’s hard to imagine his fight bringing in a lot of PPV buys. Further, having fans fly all the way to Dubai would prove to be a hardship, and it’s quite likely that only few would be able to make the trip.

“We are planning November event. It will be a spectacular event. If it is successful we will look forward to doing a Pacquiao fight in Dubai next year,” Arum said via emirates247.com. “I really look forward to interesting the people in big time boxing.”

Pacquiao is nearing the end of his career. He might be better off taking the safe money by fighting exclusively in the United States instead of traveling here and there to fight in Dubai and Macau and ending up with less than spectacular PPV results. Arum has a lot of young fighters that can afford to fight in places like Macau and Dubai for three or four years of their careers.

Arum could stick Nonito Donaire and Terence Crawford in those countries and let them chew up a number of years in order to open up those countries for eventual PPV. I don’t think Pacquiao has that kind of time left in his career, and he might better off sticking in the country where the majority of his PPV money comes from by fighting in the U.S.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not going to go for the idea of fighting Pacquiao in Dubai. If that’s an idea Arum has, he can forget it. Mayweather will only fight in the United States, and it’s still unlikely that he’ll ever fight Pacquiao again after he beat the 36-year-old Filipino fighter by a 12 round decision on May 2nd of this month.



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