Junior lightweight star Manny Pacquiao still plans to fight in April, but that’s about the only thing that remains intact from the original plan Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was putting together for the Filipino icon.
Instead of facing featherweight titlist Injin Chi of South Korea on April 28 in the Chinese territory of Macau, Arum told ESPN.com Monday that Pacquiao would fight an opponent to be determined April 21 in San Antonio.
Arum said he has reserved the Alamodome, which would be configured to accommodate 20,000 fans, as the site for the pay-per-view event. Arum said he will distribute the event on his own because HBO is leery of being involved in the fight due to the ongoing litigation between Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions over Pacquiao’s promotional rights.
“Manny will fight in San Antonio and we’ll have an announcement on the opponent in a couple of days,” Arum said.
Arum said that junior bantamweight star Jorge Arce, coming off a dominant decision against Julio Ler last week, will fight in the co-feature, possibly against former two-time title challenger and 2000 U.S. Olympian Jose Navarro, whose last fight was a stirring decision victory against Gabriel Elizondo in November in San Antonio.
“We love the fight. We have to work out the details but we love it,” Navarro promoter Lou DiBella told ESPN.com. “It’s perfect timing for Jose and he is confident he can win. I think it’s a great style matchup. Jose wants the fight. Bob and I are going to talk and finish the details this week.”
Junior welterweight prospect Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the son of the Mexican legend and a big draw in the Hispanic region, will also be on the show.
Another fight Arum hopes to add to the bill is junior flyweight Brian Viloria against Edgar Sosa for a vacant title.
In a bid to regain his belt, Viloria was held to a draw by Omar Nino in their Nov. 18 rematch. However, Nino was stripped of the title last week because he tested positive for methamphetamines after the bout.
The key reason for the change in dates, Arum said, was because of problems in Macau.
“We found out that because of certain delays there are only about 4,000 decent hotel rooms in Macau, and that is not enough to handle demand for this event,” Arum said. “They have a whole group of properties that are coming on line that we were expecting to be open by the end of April, but they aren’t going to make it. By the fall there will be 10,000 rooms. There will be plenty to handle the people in the fall.”
Arum said he and hotel magnate Steve Wynn, whose 600-room Wynn Macau resort was to host the fight, plan to reschedule the Pacquiao-Chi fight for October.
Arum said he didn’t consider bringing Chi to the U.S. for the fight because it made more sense for him to fight Pacquiao in Asia, where he has a fan base.
Another reason for the rescheduling was to accommodate Pacquiao’s potential political aspirations. Pacquiao, according to reports in the Filipino media, is considering either a run for mayor of General Santos City, his hometown, or for his province’s congressional seat.
“Boxing isn’t the most important thing to certain people, including him,” Arum said. “If he’s going to run for office he needs the time to run.”
Elections are May 14, and moving the fight back would give him extra time to campaign in the critical weeks before the election. Pacquiao, 28, is one of the most popular figures in Filipino history.
The combination of the hotel situation and Pacquiao’s possible political aspirations led Arum to put a new plan in place over the weekend.
“We’ve got to put it all the elements together but we’re going to San Antonio,” he said.
Arum said Pacquiao, the 2006 ESPN.com and Ring magazine fighter of the year, would do the first part of his training camp in the Philippines and come to the United States six weeks before the fight.
Pacquiao’s head trainer, Freddie Roach, notified his fighters last week that he would be going to work exclusively with Oscar De La Hoya beginning March 1 in Puerto Rico as De La Hoya prepares to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 5.
Roach said his assistant, Justin Fortune, would take over training Pacquiao (43-3-2, 33 KOs) for his April fight.
“If Manny wants Justin Fortune to do his training, fine,” Arum said. “He’s a nice guy, a good trainer, and Manny is used to Justin. But Justin will have to be willing to go over to Philippines.”
It is unclear if Fortune would do that because he has inherited other Roach fighters and is working them out at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif.
