Golden Boy Promotions executive Richard Schaefer said Top Rank’s Bob Arum must be “dreaming” when the latter said Marco Antonio Barrera hinted that he is no longer connected with GBP and is therefore open to fight Manny Pacquiao later this year.
“Maybe he (Arum) was dreaming about that in his flight over to Manila,” Schaefer told Philboxing.com of Arum who was in Gen. Santos City last week to provide morale support to Pacquiao who was then campaigning for yesterday’s elections.
Arum told Manila-based scribes that Barrera, who lost his WBC super-featherweight crown to Juan Manuel Marquez last March, had “contacted some people we know” saying he is no longer connected with GBP, owned by Oscar dela Hoya.
Top Rank and GBP are locked in a legal tussle involving the promotional rights over Pacquiao. And this is the main reason why a megabuck fight or fights between Pacquiao and GBP boxers like Barrera and Marquez remain in the balance.
Arum said Pacquiao must soon choose from among Joan Guzman, Edwin Valero, Barrera or Humberto Soto whom he’d like to face by October. Arum said Marquez’ name is down the list because the reigning champion is “demanding a lot of money.”
However, Golden Boy announced the other day that Marquez and Barrera are already set to do a rematch on Sept. 15, leaving Pacquiao with only three exciting but lesser fighters to choose from.
Schaefer said if Barrera turns down a rematch with Marquez, GBP has Argentinian Jorge Barrios standing by as a worthy challenger.
Arum said Top Rank and GBP must sit down and talk, set their differences aside, and stage the fight that the public wants, just the way he did with Don King with whom he had co-promoted big fights despite their “bitter and horrible” personal battles.
Arum even said he plans to meet with the Barrera camp this Saturday so he could hear it straight from them whether or not the 33-year-old Mexican assassin is still with GBP.
Schaefer said that if Arum “continues to go behind our back and talk to our fighters and try to steal other fighters from us and keeps calling us bad names and belittling Golden Boy Promotions then that’s the wrong pattern. He is going down the wrong path.”
Schaefer said he had “not heard any such thing” regarding a possible reconciliatory meeting between Top Rank and GBP.
