By Kenneth Friedman: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says Manny Pacquiao will beat Floyd Mayweather if that rematch takes place now. Arum says Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) is now at the point where he’s able to beat the 42-year-old Mayweather. That’s a fight that Arum would like to see, because he says it would do really well.
Mayweather hasn’t fought in four years against a professional boxer, and he looked shot to pieces in his last two fights against hand-picked MMA fighters Tenshin Nasukawa and Conor McGregor. It’s not just Pacquiao that would likely beat Mayweather right now. One can argue almost any of the top 15 at 147 would beat him at this point. Even the top 140 pound fighters Regis Prograis and Josh Taylor would be a nightmare for Floyd. Mayweather barely beat Marcos Maidana in their two fights five years ago in 2014.
Pacquiao’s fights not bringing in enough buys
Arum is pleased that Pacquiao defeated WBA Super World welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman (29-1, 21 KOs) last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. But he points out that Pacquiao’s fight with Thurman is rumored to have brought in less than 500,000 buys on pay-per-view, and that makes it hard to pay or the Filipino star’s purse with that amount of buys. Arum feels that with Pacquiao’s huge purse requirements, it makes it hard to find for one to pay his purse if he’s bring in less than 500,000 buys.
He says Pacquiao, 40, should retire if he can’t get the Mayweather, because none of the other welterweights in the division makes any sense for him to fight.
Arum: How do you pay for Pacquiao’s purse?
“I heard whether it’s 450, 400, be it 350, but remember, Manny Pacquiao gets paid as a guy that does one million buys,” said Top Rank Boxing promoter Bob Arum to Fighthub. “So if you do a lot less than half [500,000 buys], I mean, how do you pay his purse? That was the problem we had when we decided we couldn’t promote him anymore. I think that’s great. He got the win [against Keith Thurman]. He went out on a big note. I would recommend that this is the time for him to hang it up. But listen, he makes his own choices.
He’s a smart guy. I mean, I wouldn’t be that concerned if he didn’t have his whole career in front of him, and slur your words. If that fight happens, then it’s probably worth it to do, because that would be a big, big, big fight,” said Arum about a Pacquiao vs Mayweather rematch. “Manny Pacquiao would win now.”
The problem that Pacquiao has is there aren’t any welterweights in the division that are popular enough to bring in huge pay-per-view buys in a fight against him. The top guys, Errol Spence Jr., Terence Crawford, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Yordenis Ugas and Sergey Lipinets. None of them are big enough names with the casual boxing fans that Pacquiao can make huge money fighting them.
Pacquiao shouldn’t fight Spence or Porter says Arum
“That would be crazy. He shouldn’t do that,” said Arum about Pacquiao fighting Errol Spence or Shawn Porter. “If it’s a Mayweather fight, yeah, okay. But if it’s not a Mayweather fight, then he should hang it up. No, those fights [Spence and Porter] don’t make any sense. If Pacquiao wanted the fight , but Pacquiao has already turned the fight down a few times,” said Arum about Terence Crawford. “It’s up to him. If he gets Mayweather, fine. That’s a big, big fight, and he can get revenge on Mayweather or try to. But if it’s anyone else, I think he should think very, very, very seriously about hanging it up. Manny Pacquiao has been a great fighter of our time, and God forbid that he gets hurt, particularly when he’s got such a brilliant career ahead of him,” said Arum.
If Pacquiao can make the huge money fighting Spence, Porter and Terence Crawford that he made against Thurman, he might be willing to take those fights. Manny is rumored to be making $20 million for the Thurman fight. With Thurman said to be getting $10 million for the fight, it’s hard to imagine how the organizers of the FOX PPV event are going to make any money at all. Just to support Pacquiao and Thurman’s huge purses is going will be hard enough. But there’s also all the undercard fighters that took part in the event.
There’s a lot of fan pressure for Pacquiao to fight the winner of the Spence vs. Porter fight. Arum thinks that’s a bad idea though. He’s likely looking at it from the perspective in that it would be a really hard fight for Pacquiao to face the winner of that match.
Leo Santa Cruz surprised Pacquiao beat Thurman
“Manny Pacquiao is a great fighter. I thought age was going to play a factor,” said Leo Santa Cruz to Fighthype about Manny’s fight against Thurman. “I thought Thurman, being younger, was going to beat Pacquiao, but Pacquiao surprised me. He beat Thurman, and he had a really good fight. And he fought like in his prime. He came out throwing a lot of punches. He showed a lot of heart. When he dropped him, I though, ‘Damn., he still has the power.’ His last opponent [Adrien Broner], he didn’t knock him out. So I thought his power is going away from him. But in this fight, he showed that he still has speed and power. I thought he was going to knock him out. He said he wanted to prove something, and he did prove it . I think he’s still going to give good fights,” said Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz had picked Thurman to beat Pacquiao ahead of time. He made that choice based on the 30-year-old Thurman’s youth, because he’s 10 years younger than the 40-year-old Pacquiao. Thurman is closer to his prime than Pacquiao is, but it’s pretty clear that ‘One Time’ has lost a lot from his game with the two years he was out of boxing from 2017 to 2019.
