Promoter Bob Arum isn?t worried about how well his pay-per-view card this Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas will perform compared to how the last two major HBO Pay-Per-View cards ended. First, you had the controversial ending between Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz in September and then a month later, the aborted bout between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson. Arum believes they will have little- if any- bearing on how well the third chapter between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez will be received by the public.
?Obviously, we would?ve wanted the fights that preceded Manny?s fights to be barnburners but you can?t always get what you want,? he told Maxboxing late last week. ?Will it hurt our pay-per-view that the Mayweather fight had the bizarre ending, etc.? I don?t know. It might but what can you do? As far as the other fight is concerned, nobody watched it anyways. No harm, no foul.?
There is a sense from the public that they were either shortchanged or ripped off with these events. It?s one thing to watch a stinker on HBO or Showtime. It?s a whole ?nother ballgame when you?re forking out another 60-70 bones for it. But what took place in the previous months, according to Arum, will not affect them. ?No, because we?re trying to educate the public that in our events, we do an event. We do something that is really special. The one thing you can?t control- no promoter can control- is how the fight actually turns out in the ring. That is impossible, so you?ve got to really have faith in the guys who are putting it together, doing it for you and hope that it turns out that way. But that being said, what we try to do at Top Rank is provide them with an evening of entertainment.?
