An upbeat Bob Arum, bubbling over and saying that as of Thursday morning 11,000 tickets have been sold for the Dec. 3 Grudge Match at Madison Square Garden between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito, has no intention of steering Mexican star Julio Cesar Chavez into a near future showdown against middleweight king Sergio Martinez.
WBC Leader for Life Don Jose Sulaiman has been growling, in his avuncular manner, about holding Son of the Culiacan Legend Chavez’s feet to the fistic fire in a mandatory against the rugged Argentinian.
Instead, and not unexpectedly since Uncle Bob’s favorite Motown tune was always “First I Look At The Purse,” Arum said he had an exploratory chat with Golden Guy Richie Rich Schaefer about a more lucrative, all Mexico showdown in April of 2012.
“The fight for Chavez, assuming he beats Peter Manfredo Jr. on Nov. 19, is to fight Canelo Alvarez,” Arum said by telephone from Las Vegas. “I see Canelo also have a November fight. I had lunch with Schaefer a few weeks ago and he raised the subject of Chavez-Alvarez.
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“It’s the best fight that can be made for Chavez and for the other kid. It will do great on pay per view and also at the gate…if it can happen.
SEE MARTINEZ, HIS CAMP THINK CHAVEZ JR. WILL FORFEIT HIS WBC BELT SHORTLY.
There has been talk that 21 year old Alvarez will fight up and down Kermit Cintron next month.
“Look, nothing’s been decided and, as I said, they both have fights to take care of first. Schaefer believes the fight should be held in Las Vegas and he may be right on that. I pretty much agree on that aspect but I think both fighters may disagree.
“It might be that both of these popular Mexican fighters may want to do it in a spectacular setting like Mexico City’s huge Azteca Stadium. That also remains to be seen.”
Azteca Stadium, of course, holds the record for boxing’s biggest crowd ever, the nearly 132,274 who gathered to see JC Chavez Sr. pummel game but overmatched Greg Haugen.
The date of the one-sided bout was Feb. 20, 1993.
You may recall Haugen’s prefight dismissal of Papa Chavez, saying the man from Culiacan had an 82-0 record littered with KOs over “cabdrivers from Tijuana.”
After Chavez turned Haugen into a mass of black, blue and purple welts, Chavez asked in Spanish what the loser thought about his prior foes.
Haugen went for a laugh behind his pain.
“Those were some tough motherbleeping cabdrivers,” Haugen said.
In other news, Arum revealed that lightweight champ Brandon Bam Bam Rios title defense against England’s John Murray has been signed and sealed as part of the sterling MSG undercard.
“Tickets are really moving in New York,” Arum said. “They have about 6,500 left because the capacity is a bit smaller due to their arena renovation.
“This is a grudge fight and it gets people’s blood boiling. They know they’re going to see a great fight in the main event and we’ve put together an extremely strong undercard.
“The way it’s going, yeah it sure looks like a sellout. We’ve added (Notre Dame alum) Mike Lee to the undercard and that will bring out the famous Subway Alumni from Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish grads and fans haven’t even started buying their tickets.”
Arum repeated his mantra about a strong undercard, beyond crowdpleaser Rios, which includes Philadelphia fighter Mike Jones against Sebastian Lujan and a hotly anticipated Pawel Wolak-Delvin Rodriguez rematch.
