Tonight’s pay-per-view boxing match featuring Manny Pacquiao against Jorge Solis might look and sound familiar – especially to fans of major league mixed martial arts, promoter Bob Arum said.
Arum, whose Top Rank Inc. is producing the card from San Antonio, freely acknowledged he plans to rely on the fast pace, driving music and other high-energy production values that have been embraced by mixed martial arts organizations such as the wildly popular Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“We realize there’s a crisis in boxing, and one of the reasons is that the cable networks are still covering boxing the same way they did 30 years ago,” Arum said. “There are too many pauses. There are too many stretches between fights where everybody is sitting around doing nothing. There’s too much time where the announcers are sitting around pontificating and everybody is getting bored.”
Arum said he designed tonight’s pay-per-view card (6 p.m., $44.95) so viewers would find each of the four fights appealing – much like in the UFC, where enthusiastic fans fill the arena for the entire undercard rather than waiting around for the main event.
Before 2006 fighter of the year Pacquiao (43-3-2, 34 knockouts) risks his super featherweight belt against Solis (32-0-2, 23 KOs), Brian Viloria and Edgar Sosa will fight for the world mini-flyweight title; Jorge Arce will meet Cristian Mijares for the world super flyweight championship; and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will take on Tony Shuler.
“I believe boxing is a lot more exciting than mixed martial arts or the UFC, but the presentation of the UFC is so much better than boxing,” Arum said. “My competition (as a pay-per-view producer) is not HBO. My competition is the UFC. This show will demonstrate that boxing can be presented in a way that’s every bit as exciting and energetic as the UFC – and our product is better.”
Virtually “half the Philippines” has descended on the Alamodome, Arum said, to follow Pacquiao, who is campaigning for Congress in his native country. The election is May 14.
“There’s a lot of people who are poor,” Pacquiao said. “They need my help because there are some politicians that are always promising, and they (don’t) do anything.”
Visualizing victory
An open workout by Oscar De La Hoya drew a full house of reporters and photographers this week to Wilfredo Gomez Gym in Puerto Rico, where De La Hoya is training for his May 5 megafight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand.
De La Hoya told the media he is preparing mentally as well as physically for the bout, which is shaping up as boxing’s biggest event in several years.
“I have started the visualizing process,” De La Hoya said. “I’m totally at ease with myself and every day when I’m training I feel comfortable.
“This comfort will take me through May 5, when all of a sudden the light goes on, we’re in the ring in Las Vegas and 18,000 people are cheering. The question is, who’s going to crack? What’s going to happen?”
Hatton an early favorite
An early Las Vegas betting line has Ricky Hatton a minus-160 favorite (risk $1.60 to net $1) against Jose Luis Castillo in their junior welterweight showdown June 23 at the Thomas & Mack Center. Both men won 12-round decisions against different opponents in January at Paris Las Vegas .
Jeff Haney can be reached at 259-4041 or at [email protected].
