TO THOSE not still in the know, the one person that Bob Arum hates the most is Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Contrary to popular belief, even with the promise of generating tons of cash in the megabuck fight of the century, Arum doesn?t want a Pacquiao-Mayweather from happening.
Not after he was spurned twice by Mayweather during talks to stage the fight.
In fairness, Arum used to like a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight to happen.
But after two, three, failed talks with Mayweather, Arum called it quits.
He branded Mayweather the ?most difficult person to deal with.?
I remember Arum saying, ?Mayweather is a boxer and manager rolled into one.?
Arum said you can?t achieve a fair and square deal with a boxer who also manages himself at the same time.
Going further, if there?s one happy man following the shocking sixth-round knockout loss of Manny Pacquiao to Juan Manuel Marquez on Dec. 9 (PHL Time), it was Arum.
Pacquiao?s defeat all but torpedoed any further talks on a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight from ever happening?with finality, almost.
Notice Arum?s post-fight statement. ?A fifth fight between Pacquiao and Marquez? That?s a strong possibility. And it could even be bigger than the fourth fight. The fifth fight can be the biggest of all time.?
You know, he has a point.
Remember that even after Pacquiao?s loss, Pacquiao still leads the series, 2-1-1, win-loss-draw, against Marquez. Meaning, record-wise, Pacquiao is still ahead.
The knockout win for Marquez counts a lot, yes, but to many, that happened merely via a lucky punch.
As Torrecampo, Pacquiao?s first conqueror by knockout in 1997, said in Tagalog, ?Every boxer has a lucky knockout punch.?
That was again, a tacit admission that he knocked Pacquiao out with a lucky punch.
He was echoing, of course, Flash Elorde?s wisdom: ?That?s why one is called a boxer because he has a knockout punch.?
But even if it was a lucky punch, pitting Pacquiao now against Mayweather will be a surefire formula for disaster. Pacquiao?s humiliating defeat will never sell, given the debilitating impact it had created on the boxing business.
Bye, Floyd.
