RIO DE JANEIRO–When he lays down to sleep, Uncle Bob Arum does not dream of sugar plums and magical fairies.
Sorry to disappoint you as to the flying fairies, venomous comment poster who goes by the name of`Bernie Vee, but I?m just being real in Rio.
No, the almost octogenarian who runs Manny Pacquiao promotional company Top Rank dreams of tending to his fistic flock. Like the Good but Always Selfish Shepherd, he wants to keep his prize pugilist Pacman away from the flocks of others.
I hear you saying now, ?Get the flock out of here, Marley, with this nonsense, this poppycock, this boxing balderdash.?
But it is true. In Bob`s Dream World, Pacquiao would his and his only and he would not have to let interlopers such as Golden Boy, the company which packs the Golden Suitcase when it takes Megamanny out for a steak dinner on the sly, in on his gold strikes.
Would it be possible for Pacman to finish his ring career by fighting only other chattel of Top Rank, other laborers on what the insane but also genius boxing newsletter publisher Malcolm ?Flash? Gordon used to persistently refer to as ?the Top Rank Plantation ruled over by Marsa Bob.?
Not that the acid pen of Gordon cut any slack for Arum?s constant rival in days of yore, Don King. King was referenced to as ?Dung King? by the underground commentator.
But, as I slowly sip my first sublime caipirinha of the morning on sunny Copacabana Beach, I digress. If it gets any hotter down here in the subtropics, I may have to switch to a frosty chopp.
Hey, is that Acelino ?Popo? Freitas over there doing chinups on the seaside gym along with former Brazilian heavyweight hope Adilson ?Magilla? Rodriguez?
The fight crowd is small in this giant and great country.
So how could Uncle Bob realize his keep it in the fistic family dream vis-a-vis Pacman?
Simple, Pacfans and Pachuggers alike, simple.
Miguel Cotto, diminished but still a threat, fights Megamanny come Nov. 14.
Megamanny wins and then starts playing political general, rallying the troops in Saranganni for his Congressional push.
Pacman wins in an electoral landslide and then comes back to his other job, boxing.
Sometime before this year is over, Arum fully expects Nevada to look at the brain injury history of undefeated Venezuelan Edwin Valero, Champion and Scourge of Tuk Tuk Drivers Everywhere, on an individual basis.
In doing so, Nevada will alter its current law to examine boxers in Valero?s medical circumstance individually rather than ban them with a blanket rule.
Valero gets his ticket in Nevada and, voila, another ready made and not so difficult opponent for Pacman. More importantly to Uncle Bob, it?s another of his well paid serfs in the opposite corner from the Pinoy Idol.
That brings us to, let?s say, June of 2010.
By then, Mayweather versus Pacquiao will be at the promotional boiling point.
But still, even then, you can count on poker player Arum to have another of his own cards on standby. He will use whoever that viable Pacman opponent is as a bargaining chip with which to slice and dice the Mayweather share of the huge Big Fight pie.
Dr. Martin Luther King, a truly great man in the annals of history, had a dream. Barack Obama?s name was written within King?s Dream albeit in invisible ink.
Arum, too, has a dream. Within the dream is a scheme.
If Floyd versus Manny is not put together by the fall of 2010, it will never happen.
But Bob and Manny will plug along using only Top Rank field hands as opponents.
Either way, Arum?s schemes sandwiched inside dreams only have happy endings.
