Broner says he’ll fight Pacquiao if Arum gets the money right

By Boxing News - 03/29/2017 - Comments

Image: Broner says he’ll fight Pacquiao if Arum gets the money right

By Jim Dower: Former four division world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner (33-2, 24 KOs) is ready to face Manny Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KOs) next if the Filipino star’s promoter Bob Arum offers him the right amount of money to take the fight. Arum has given Pacquiao a 48-hour deadline to agree to a fight against unbeaten Top Rank fighter Jeff Horn for June.

If Pacquiao doesn’t take that fight, Arum is saying he’ll be out of the ring until November. In other words, Arum doesn’t have a backup plan for Pacquiao. Broner, 27, would be an ideal opponent for Pacquiao’s June fight, as long as Arum can come up with the right amount of money to make him happy. It’s unclear what number Broner is looking for as far as guaranteed money.

Given Pacquiao’s recent low PPV totals in his last 2 fights in 2016, Arum would be taking a risk if he gave Broner a big guaranteed purse. The fight be doable if Arum were able to persuade Broner to accept a smaller purse up front, and then give him a good percentage of the pay-per-view money.

“Tell Arum to make my money right and he’s going to have a nice fight,” said Broner to Fighthub.com about him being ready to face Pacquiao if the money is right.

Broner is coming off of a less than stellar performance in beating Adrian Granados by a 10 round split decision on February 18 this year. Broner barely won the fight, and there were a lot of boxing fans that thought Granados did more than enough to deserve the win. Broner says he injured his left hand in round 1. Broner was still using his left hand throughout the fight, and was getting hit a lot by Granados.

It was another one of Broner’s less than spectacular fights. Broner’s last fight in which he shined was 4 years ago when he beat Gavin Rees by a 5th round TKO. Since that fight, Broner has looked poor in fights against Paulie Malignaggi, Marcos Maidana, Carlos Molina, Ashley Theophane, Granados, Emmanuel Taylor, Shawn Porter and Khabib Allakhverdiev. Broner’s only fight since 2013 that he looked good was against John Molina Jr. in 2015, and a big reason for that was because Molina wasn’t throwing punches. He looked intimidated and fought well below his ability.

“I think I could have done better, but I hurt my left hand in the 1st round,” said Broner about his recent narrow 10 round split decision win over Adrian Granados. “I think it’s still swollen. II think I probably would have stopped him if I didn’t hurt my left hand,” said Broner.

Broner beat Granados by the score 96-94, 97-93 for Broner and 97-93 for Granados.

“They have to make a decision by Wednesday (Thursday in Manila),” said Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum to the Manila Bulletin. “If we can’t get a fight for him this July, we’ll look at November. Unless it’s a big fight, we are looking at Manny fighting outside the US.”

It’s unclear if Arum can’t find anyone else for Pacquiao to fight in June besides Jeff Horn or he simply won’t.

If Broner can take less money for his guaranteed purse for the Pacquiao fight, then Arum might make the fight. It’s risky for Arum to give Broner a huge guarantee for his purse, because if the Pacquiao-Broner fight fails to bring in a lot of pay-per-view buys, then it could be a money losing situation. Broner hasn’t established himself as a PPV fighter yet, so it would be risky for him to be given a large guarantee.

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