By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said today that if his fighter Manny Pacquiao looks good against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas on November 5, they might look at middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for Manny to fight.
Arum had to be kidding, but it’s hard to know for sure. Putting Pacquiao in with Golovkin would be one sure fire way to bring the Filipino fighter’s pay-per-view numbers back up to over 1 million buys where they used to be at.
Arum said this about Pacquiao vs. Golovkin in today’s teleconference call as quoted by Dan Rafael:
“Manny may look so good in this fight (vs Vargas) we may look for Golovkin next!”
Arum might as well throw Pacquiao in the ring with GGG, because he’s not going to get a lot of PPV buys if all Arum does is match him against Terence Crawford, one of his other Top Rank stable fighters. I’m sorry, but Crawford IS NOT a pay-per-view fighter. We just that clearly with the reported 50,000 buys that Crawford’s fight against Viktor Postol brought in last July on HBO PPV. I don’t think that Floyd Mayweather Jr. will come out of retirement to face Pacquiao again. That ship has sailed.
Arum should be trying to maximize the amount of money Pacquiao makes for each fight. I don’t understand Pacquiao being matched against non-popular fighters like Jessie Vargas, Joshua Clottey, Brandon Rios, Chris Algieri, and Tim Bradley These are some of the fighters that Arum has matched Pacquiao up against in the last six years. I wouldn’t have done that if I was promoting Pacquiao, because I think those fights hurt his brand. To keep Pacquiao popular, Arum needed to match him tougher than he has. It’s no good to wait six years before matching Pacquiao against Floyd Mayweather Jr., and then go back to putting him in with non-popular Top Rank stable fighters like Vargas and Bradley. That’s a fail.
This is the way I see it. If welterweight Kell Brook was willing to step up and face Golovkin for big money in their fight last September, then Pacquiao and Arum should be willing to take a fight against Golovkin as well. If Pacquiao loses to Golovkin, then not a big deal, because he won’t take flak from the boxing public due to Golovkin being a middleweight. We’ve seen how Brook’s popularity has increased with his loss to Golovkin.
All Brook did was fight him tough for a few rounds before his trainer threw in the towel once he started taking punishment. You don’t want Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach to throw in the towel with him in a fight against Golovkin, but it would still be an interesting fight. If Pacquiao could give Golovkin some tough rounds, he might come out of the fight as a hero rather than someone who is being dumped on by boxing fans for losing the fight. The only way Pacquiao would look bad in losing to Golovkin is if he gets knocked out in the first two or three rounds. If Pacquiao can at least make it to the 5th round before he gets knocked out by the Kazakhstan fighter, I think he would come out of the fight in great shape.
If Pacquiao doesn’t fight Golovkin next, then these are likely the opponents he’ll be looking to match him against:
1. Terence Crawford
2. Tim Bradley – fourth fight
3. Jessie Vargas – rematch
4. Danny Garcia
5. Adrien Broner
6. Keith Thurman
These are not fights that will sell a lot of pay-per-view buys. Even if Arum goes outside his Top Rank stable to match Pacquiao against Thurman, Broner or Danny Garcia, I don’t think those are fights that will bring in a lot of buys. I think Pacquiao’s brand has been hurt too badly with his repeated rematches against Bradley, and fights against guys like Brandon Rios and Chris Algieri. At this point, I think Arum needs to shock the boxing public when it comes to Pacquiao by matching him against either Golovkin or Saul Canelo Alvarez. Believe me; the fans would pay to see Pacquiao fight those guys. They would be huge fights if Arum was willing to make them.