Promoter Bob Arum certainly has not given up on a fight between his Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. But that fight would lose a lot of luster off its shine if Mayweather were to lose to Victor Ortiz on Saturday or Pacquiao were to lose to Juan Manuel Marquez on Nov. 12.
It was therefore no surprise to hear Arum handicap Saturday’s fight minutes before he played host to a news conference last week in Beverly Hills promoting Pacquiao-Marquez III slated for MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
“I think Ortiz is a good, young fighter,” Arum said. “But he’s really inexperienced and in fighting Floyd he’s fighting a guy who really knows boxing. So I don’t give Ortiz much of a chance to beat Mayweather.
“I mean, he’s going to try. But I just don’t give him a chance.”
Arum makes sense. And that’s exactly what he wants if and when he sits down again to try and successfully negotiate a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather – common sense.
“As far as a Mayweather fight with Pacquiao, we’ve wanted to do it for well over a year – almost two years,” Arum said.
“They have to come to the table after November. If they come to the table, that’s our first choice. But we’re not going to chase them.”
Arum was just getting warmed up.
“They keep raising this issue about blood and urine testing and that really gets me angry because we have now said it’s no longer an issue,” he said. “We will exceed to these tests. But again, it can’t be done in a stupid, childish way.
“It has to be done under the jurisdiction of an athletic commission because the athletic commission has to supervise and the reports have to go to the athletic commission because otherwise you’ve got this testing group that’s functioning outside of the regulatory scheme of boxing and that’s not going to work.
