Is Pacquiao-Mayweather Next?

"No, they have not begun, but I’m sure they will. I think they will before the end of the week," said Arum. When asked if he expected a laborious and drawn out negotiation, he answered,"No, hey, I can only talk for my guy and my side. If Schaefer has control of the situation on the other side, it will not be a difficult process."

 

As for a Plan B, if a bout with Mayweather can not be consummated, Arum stated,"Well, he could do the ( Juan Manuel) Marquez fight, that would be an interesting fight. Marquez is the only guy who held him close, giving him a tough time. So that would be an interesting fight and probably that would be the leading option."

 

But Schaefer has made comments that he would be interested in matching Marquez with Ricky Hatton in England in the first quarter of 2010. Both of those fighters are promoted by Golden Boy.

 

Pacquiao’s trainer, Freddie Roach, isn’t interested in any interim fights before facing Mayweather.

 

" I want Mayweather, next," he told Max-TV on Tuesday morning at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California." Why go after someone else? I want to go for the whole thing, the big ones. The thing is, you talk about March, but that fight can’t be made by March because we need more time, of course, to be 100-percent healthy. I’ll have a ten week training camp, new sparring partners, just a whole different ballgame. We know how to get in shape and we’ll be in great shape and all that stuff but the game plan will be completely different. There’s a lot of changes we have to make. But I have a guy who’s very capable of making those changes."

 

Despite the dominance of Pacquiao, this was not an easy fight from a physical standpoint for the Filipino icon, who was noticeably bruised up and suffered a busted right ear-drum from the heavy hands of Cotto.

 

" It was the most physical, ever, because he made it that way because he wanted to beat Cotto at his own game, he wanted to prove that he’s really a welterweight, he’s not just a blown up welterweight. He’s at true ’47-pounder and beat a guy that way," explained Roach, who wants to see his charge back in the ring around May or June."He could’ve made the fight much easier by just boxing and using in-and-out motion. He dominated him when he did that. But he wanted to prove that he was the stronger guy."

 

The veteran promoter agrees with those sentiments.

" I think what Freddie is saying is correct. March is too early. Based on the fact that Manny, for the first time, took significant punishment in the fight. I mean, Cotto, was a real tough fight, banged him around and the ear has got to heal. Not that it’s a big deal. But Freddie is right. Freddie is the master, he really is. He understands his fighter and forget doing anything that disturbs this great fighting machine. So I listen very carefully to what Freddie says."

 

Another question is just where Pacquiao’s next contest will take place. But there are plenty of options that go far beyond your traditional casino settings."I don’t know," admitted Arum." but if it’s a Mayweather fight, it could be either in Nevada, it could be in Texas, in New Orleans. I mean James Carville is going crazy, doing this and doing that. So we’re going to everybody. New York, would be a wonderful spot for it, but it can’t happen."

 

The bottom line on ’the Big Apple’ is that Pacquiao would have to pay too much in taxes to make it a reality.  Meaning that the Boston Red Sox will call the new Yankee Stadium home before Pacquiao ever boxes in it. And wait, did, Arum just mention James Carville, the noted political analyst?

 

" Yeah," confirmed Arum," he was at the fight and he and his wife are on a committee to bring events to New Orleans." The Superdome, home of the NFL Saints, is no stranger to hosting big boxing events, having been the location of such fights as the rematches between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks and the infamous ’no mas’ fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran.

 

On Monday, Mayweather, released this statement to various media outlets:

“Manny Pacquiao is the fighter and every time someone asks him if he wants to fight me, he says it is up to his promoter, he’s going to take a vacation, whatever the answer is,” said Mayweather today. “I have yet to hear him actually say, ‘yes I want to fight Mayweather.’ We are the fighters and if one fighter is talking about fighting another fighter, then they should just come out and say it. Manny Pacquiao doesn’t say anything directly about fighting me because he might just know it’s not a fight he can win. He said during an interview he did leading up to his fight that he didn’t think I wanted to fight him and that boxing for me was just a business and I wasn’t interested in a good fight. But again, he never said during that interview that he would fight me. Why is he talking about what I won’t do instead of what he wants to do? Plain and simple, it’s because he knows he can’t beat me under any circumstances.”

 

Perhaps Mayweather is forgetting some of his own comments he made at his post-fight presser after he downed Marquez, or some of his contradictory answers he gave to ’RA the Rugged Man’ or the fact that Pacquiao has really never called anyone out. But Arum takes these comments in stride."Floyd Mayweather, I mean, why would you pay attention to what he says? As far as I’m concerned the one thing I’m not going to do, ever, is to reply to him. Just let him say whatever the hell he wants to say."

 

Mayweather-Marquez garnered a million pay-per-view buys. Top Rank hoped to exceed that mark but many questioned if they could with two boxers who’s first language is not English. But as November 14Th approached, this promotion gained great momentum and even garnered coverage from unlikely sources. One example, on ESPN’s College Gameday, the fight was featured during their prediction segment.( For the record, Desmond Howard and Lee Corso, both tabbed Pacquiao by KO, while Kirk Herbstreit predicted a Cotto victory.) Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, even the New York Times covered this event.

 

"With the pay-per-view, the results that we have, this is tracking like a heavyweight fight. In other words, it is not tracking, skewing to the Hispanic areas. It’s tracking just like a heavyweight fight right across the country," explained Arum.

 

Schaefer, though, is citing the fact that Mayweather, with like opponents( De La Hoya, Hatton and Marquez) had superior numbers from a pay-per-view perspective. But Arum knows why Schaefer is taking that tact."Because we did significantly better than Floyd did against Marquez. That’s our leverage and they have to say something to give them their leverage. But when he fought De La Hoya, it was the De La Hoya who hadn’t been beaten by Mayweather and also our momentum is really building. Manny Pacquiao’s a foreigner but he’s being more and more accepted by the American public. And it was clear that he was the A-side for this fight."

 

But this much is clear, Pacquiao is boxing’s most important figure, it’s greatest natural resource to cherish.

 

"Oh, absolutely, there’s not even a question," Arum, agreed." Not even a question. People who discuss boxing talk about Manny Pacquiao because he’s so different. It’s like having Bruce Lee in boxing. People want to see him do a high-wire act, they want to see him fight one guy after another, they want challenges for him. This guy is an amazing, amazing athlete, an amazing person.

"Where have we ever had a boxer like this, ever?"

 

FILM DON’T LIE

 

In my opinion, there’s no better trainer in the sport today that can diagnose and dissect a boxer like Roach. To me, he’s boxing’s version of Bill Belichick- although I think he would’ve punted from the Colts 28-yard line this past weekend. But he’s an admitted fight film junkie.

 

How many hours of film will he watch prior to a big fight?

 

"Hundreds," he says."Y’know what? It’s like reading a book twice. You’ll get more out of it the second time. You don’t always catch it. So the fourth, fifth, sixth time, you start catching everything. You start seeing patterns and habits. So I just can’t get it the first time, I get it watching over and over again. That’s what I do before I go to sleep. I fall asleep watching those fights and studying what they do well and what they don’t do well."

 

For Cotto, he viewed his bout with DeMarcus Corley, at length.

 

" Corley, I watched a lot of him early in camp. He hurt him over the top( with the right-hook). I even brought the computer to Manny and showed him because I wanted to make sure he understood he was watching the right tape. But y’know what? The more I watched Cotto, early Cotto, and then when I watched his fight with ( Joshua) Clottey, he wasn’t the same fighter."

 

So he had regressed?

"I think so."

 

Physically or technically?

 

"I thought it was both, to be honest with you. But he proved me wrong in the first round, though. He came out alive and fast. In the Clottey fight he was very methodical and sluggish and kinda slow. So he surprised me a little bit in the first two rounds. I thought he won the first two rounds. But of course the knockdown( in the third round) changed that."

 

SAFETY FIRST

 

In a wide-ranging interview we did with Roach( that can be seen on Max-TV), I asked him if he thought that his counter-part, Joe Santiago- who verbally jousted with Roach during this promotion- allowed the fight to go on because he believed that taking his man to the finish line would somehow be beneficial to his own reputation.

 

" Definitely, a world champion in survival mode, when that happens, you gotta bail him out. That’s his job to bail him out. Fighters can’t quit. If a fighter says,’Stop the fight.’ It’s embarrassing. In MMA they quit, but not in this sport. So the thing is, it’s up to the corner to protect the fighter. There’s no reason they should’ve gone on and they let him take a beating he really didn’t need to take. Because he had already given up on the win, he was trying to survive and they were just trying to get a morale victory by going the distance against Pacquiao.

"I was happy when they did stop the fight. But if I was the coach, after eight, it was over."

 

RA

 

Speaking of Mayweather’s nemesis, ’RA, the Rugged Man’ gives an ode to boxing in this rhyme:

 

PAC FLURRIES