LAS VEGAS?The Bloods and the Crips are planning joint outings for barbecues and roller skating excursions.
Friends and foes of Moammar Daffy Khadafy (one of 107 spellings of his surname) are getting ready to sit down at the table of Libyan brotherhood.
And boxing promotional archrivals Golden Boy and Top Rank are going to, in the best interest of the sport, to lay down their arms and hug out their differences.
The first two are false and, based on some things I learned here Wednesday, the only grip the fight game’s top two promotional outfits will get on each other is a bear hug.
ITEM #1?Not content to sit idly by as Floyd Mayweather Jr. works out his legal issues and, then when he does that goes looking for a tuneup fight, Bob Arum and associates have zeroed in on Mexican ringmaster Juan Manuel Marquez as Manny Pacquiao’s opponent for November, presuming that May 7 foe Sugar Shane Mosley is disposed of first.
Juan Ma will show up at the MGM Grand Hotel any minute now as part of the Mexican TV broadcast team doing the Arum-Don King Ricardo Mayorga-Miguel Cotto PPV card Saturday night.
According to Top Rankers, the slick counterpuncher and historic Pacman nemesis has a deal which expires with Oscar De La Hoya’s company 10 days hence. The magic date, they contend, is March 20 and they say JMM is then free and clear to come under the TR banner and get the third chance he longs for against Megamanny.
Clearly, this is a boom time for nearly 40 fighters in the Pacman sphere with Mosley being 39 and cashing in next, 38 year old Marquez in the wings and with Nicaraguan’s most exportable nutjob, meaning Mayorga, celebrating his 38th natal day today Thursday.
We’ll see what Golden Boy has to say about Juan Ma’s legal entanglements with them, if any.
ITEM #2?Next battlefront for the endless war between the Arums and the Goldens is for the services of hotter than a meteorite Nonito Donaire Jr. I reported to you last weekend that Donaire seems to be contending that he is now free and clear of Top Rank and that former Nevada commission chairman Jerry Bailey is handling this legal matter.
One source inside TR claims that Bailey is merely the local mouthpiece for the ?Filipino Flash? and that the real player behind Donaire’s sudden urge to free himself of the Arum yoke is old sparring partner and Golden Boy litigator, the New York attorney Judd Burstein.
I can’t verify that as I pen this piece but I do know that some loose lipped Goldens were telling friends at last Saturday’s Canelo Alvarez HBO showcase in Anaheim that it won’t be long before the 28 year old Donaire puts on a GBP jersey.
You know where this is heading if Donaire persists, right? Tell the arbitrator to start warming up in the bullpen, folks.
ITEM #3?With historic archrivals Arum and King getting along like long lost brothers in this ?Relentless? co-promotion, Golden Boy’s Richard Schaefer may be trying to roil the calm waters for both of the 79 year old promoters.
Mr. King ranted and raved Wednesday about a column in which, or so DK claimed, negative comments about HBO boxing boss Ross Greenburg were wrongly attributed to him when they were actually only came rolling off Arum’s acidic lips.
?I join in Bob’s sentiments about being treated unfairly by HBO but I don’t make it personal. I don’t call for any guy to be fired behind all that. I may agree with Bob was saying but I don’t take it to that kind of level.?
King and Arum have long claimed that Al Haymon and Golden Boy get preferrential treatment, Favored Nation status you might call it, from Greenburg and his fight buying cronies at the premium cable network.
As you know, the Mosley-Pacquiao fight left the HBO station and is riding the rails with rival Showtime and its sister network, CBS.
As I left the MGM Wednesday night, King was deep in a phone conversation with Herr Schaefer in which the Golden Guy was telling the highhaired one that he shouldn’t join awful Arum in attacking Greenburg and HBO.
The Goldens, it seems, want King as an ally and not as a force friendly to the dreaded Arum.
What a lovely war…at least for the war correspondents.
On Thursday, Mayweather returns to familiar confines, a Las Vegas criminal courtroom.
