Arum likes Pacquiao vs. Danny Garcia fight

By Boxing News - 07/14/2016 - Comments

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By Patrick McHugh: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he’s considering the idea of matching his superstar money maker Manny Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) against WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs). Arum struck out recently in attempting to negotiate a fight between Pacquiao and former four division champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner after the struggling American star priced himself out by asking for parity with Pacquiao in terms of the financial package.

There are rumors that Broner wanted $20 million for the Pacquiao fight. That amount of money would make sense if the fight between them were capable of bringing in over 2 million buys on pay-per-view, but it’s not likely the fight would do anywhere close to those numbers.

Pacquiao’s last fight against Tim Bradley was said to have brought in poor numbers in terms of buys. Pacquiao needs an opponent that can pump up his PPV numbers back to the 1 million range.

“I might call Al Haymon for Danny Garcia because it wasn’t Al that (messed it up with Broner),” Arum said. “He couldn’t do anything about what the kid was asking,” said Arum to Ringtv.com.

Pacquiao vs. Garcia would be a good fight, but it’s questionable whether there would be a great deal of interest from the boxing world in purchasing a fight of that nature. That fight sounds a lot like Pacquiao vs. Bradley as far as PPV buys go. It’s not a great fight for PPV because Garcia isn’t seen as the best fighter in the welterweight division. Garcia isn’t even seen as the third best welterweight. A fight between Pacquiao and Garcia would make sense if the 84-year-old Arum has low expectations in terms of PPV buys.

If Arum ends up paying Pacquiao his usual $20 million for his next fight, he might not turn much of a profit if he matches him against Garcia on HBO PPV. It’s not a great fight. Garcia barely beat Robert Guerrero last January in fighting for the vacant WBC welterweight title. There was a lot of criticism leveled at Garcia and the World Boxing Council for allowing him to fight Guerrero for the vacant WBC title rather than a fighter like Errol Spence Jr. or Shawn Porter.

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Guerrero had lost two out of his last four fights going into the fight against Garcia. It didn’t make much sense for Garcia to be fighting Guerrero for the vacant WBC welterweight title. Garcia also has questionable wins over Mauricio Herrera and Lamont Peterson. Even if you want to say that Garcia did enough to get those victories, you can’t dispute the fact that he looked poor in both fights.

The hardcore fight fans might not be too keen on a Pacquiao-Garcia fight. Arum needs to think hard before he pulls the trigger for Pacquiao’s next fight.

Arum is expected to have Pacquiao’s next opponent nailed down in the next week or two for his fight in October or early November. Besides Garcia, Arum has also mentioned Jessie Vargas, Terence Crawford and Viktor Postol as potential opponents for Pacquiao’s next fight. It would seem likely that Arum will pick between Vargas and Crawford for Pacquiao rather than Garcia, because he’s not one of his Top Rank fighters and he usually matches Pacquiao against his own fighters rather than outsiders.