It’s been several days since promoter Bob Arum announced Manny Pacquiao’s head-scratching decision to fight Timothy Bradley for a third time on April 9 in Las Vegas.
Bradley is a quality fighter and an even better human being, but he didn’t deserve this gig. Not by a long shot.
They’ve fought twice already and neither was a particularly compelling match. The only reason they had a rematch in 2014 was because 99.99 percent of the world believed the judges got it horribly wrong in 2012 when they scored the first bout for Bradley over Pacquiao.
Even if Pacquiao-Bradley III is the greatest fight of all-time, the choice will have been a mistake, because the bout is not going to sell at anywhere close to Pacquiao’s recent history. Even Arum admits that.
The inspired selection (if the goal is to sell as many pay-per-views as possible) would have been Adrien Broner. Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz first sought out Broner because he was unhappy with the pool of potential opponents being offered to Pacquiao.
They included Bradley, Amir Khan and 2014 Fighter of the Year Terence Crawford.
Broner is a crude, classless, tasteless man who has enormous talent but is squandering it in a misguided attempt to be the second coming of Floyd Mayweather Jr. But Broner’s affiliation with adviser Al Haymon made his choice a non-starter for Arum.
Choosing Broner, though, would have tapped a market that won’t be with Bradley. Broner is big in the hip-hop market that Mayweather relied upon to make him the biggest pay-per-view attraction of all-time. Because of the long-standing Mayweather-Pacquiao rivalry, that market would have taken up Broner’s cause in a fight with Pacquiao. And as Mayweather proved repeatedly, the market is lucrative and not adverse to shelling out the money for a pay-per-view.
Mayweather split with Arum and Top Rank in 2006 because of Arum’s unwillingness to promote him to the hip-hop market despite his repeated pleas.
During the build-up for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, Arum admitted that Mayweather was right.
“He kept asking us to market and promote him to that hip-hop market and he turned out to be 100 percent correct,” Arum told Yahoo Sports in April. “He left us and he went out and did that and he became hugely successful with that market.”
In addition, when inspired, Broner is a good offensive fighter, and a match with Pacquiao would have been appealing on that level. Fans, though, already know what to expect from a Pacquiao-Bradley fight and it’s clear they’re not that interested.
Only Pacquiao’s most fervent fans are thrilled with the Bradley choice. So Pacquiao is going to have a difficult time selling the fight. If you don’t believe that, just do a cursory Internet search and you’ll learn the truth.
Arum has made it known repeatedly over the years that he thinks the main event, not the undercard, sells the pay-per-view, so it’s unlikely that there will be a compelling undercard. Fans who paid a record price to watch the Mayweather-Pacquiao pay-per-view were outraged when there was a horrendous undercard on that show that offered little in the way of interest. It was two one-sided fights with little entertainment value.
Arum told Yahoo Sports he’s hoping to put an WBO super middleweight title fight between Arthur Abraham and Gilberto Ramirez on the undercard. In addition, he said he’d probably include heavyweight Ike Ibeabuchi, who is making a comeback after 17 years away from boxing, if the Nevada Athletic Commission licenses Ibeabuchi. Arum said he’s considering Andy Ruiz as an Ibeabuchi opponent.
The success of the pay-per-view is going to rise or fall on the public’s interest in Pacquiao-Bradley III, period. Curiously, Arum hopes that the addition of Teddy Atlas as Bradley’s trainer will make a difference. He believes that Atlas and Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach will get into a war of words in the media, providing some fireworks, and that because Atlas is an ESPN boxing analyst, the network will put him on many of its shows to hype the fight.
This is a puzzling thought from the greatest boxing promoter of all-time. He doesn’t believe that an undercard, no matter how compelling, sells, so why would he believe that a trainer could?
Pacquiao hasn’t scored a knockout since stopping Miguel Cotto in 2009, and he’s not nearly the exciting and dynamic fighter he once was. The Mayweather fight was awful and even though Pacquiao fought with an injured shoulder, it is likely that his performance cost him more of his existing fan base than it won him new fans.
Lawsuits were filed against Pacquiao in the wake of the Mayweather fight regarding his shoulder injury, and there was genuine anger among fans who feel they were gouged on that fight.
They took it out on Mayweather, and his comeback fight against Andre Berto, a similarly poor choice of opponent, and the fight sold less than a tenth of Mayweather-Pacquiao. The sports world did a collective yawn toward that bout.
And it seems likely that’s what is going to happen with Pacquiao-Bradley III.
Pacquiao is not the fighter he was and his story has been repeatedly told. There is nothing new to create interest. His time as a first-rate attraction is quickly coming to a close.
Choosing to fight Bradley a third time when no one was demanding it may simply have accelerated that process.
