The first seeds were planted for a potential mega showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather as Dan Rafael of espn.com reported that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is looking at a November 13th date for the newly elected congressman from the Philippines.
“Manny is definitely going to fight in November,” Arum said during a teleconference in which he addressed a handful of media members upon his return from the Philippines, where he had spent the past week supporting Pacquiao in the final days on the campaign trail and also talking a little business.
“The fight we want to do is the Mayweather fight,” Arum said. “There is no question that is the fight the public wants. I’m very optimistic once we start we will conclude this time [but] you never know.”
“My belief, based on my conversations with him, is that he will engage in probably three more fights,” said Arum, noting that if the Mayweather fight can’t be made Plan B is to match Pacquiao with former welterweight titlist Antonio Margarito.
“It’s amazing how many people came up to me as I was leaving the Philippines and asked me when is the Mayweather fight going to happen,” Arum said. “That’s the fight people want to see. That’s the fight and I will do my darnedest to make it happen.”
“The people are requesting that I fight Mayweather before I retire,” Pacquiao told The Associated Press. “If I ever fight again, I think I will give in to the request of the people.”
“People don’t realize that this victory over the candidate that he beat was a tremendous upset that nobody expected him to pull off,” Arum said. “The Chiongbian family holds all of the major businesses in his province. Every major elected official in the province, congressman, mayor, are related to the family or are associates of the family. Manny was running against the elder son in the family and they hadn’t been defeated. Manny Pacquiao is a fighter and with his grit and determination was not only able to win, but win by a landslide. … To me it is incredible.”
“I don’t want to discuss the issues involved in making the fight because we will be involved in negotiations. Our goal is to make that fight happen,” said Arum, who would not discuss Pacquiao’s stance on the drug testing. “We’re not going to negotiate in the press. If we do, given the egos of both camps, it will never happen.”
“Right now the lawsuit is still in play. The lawsuit is still being actively pursued,” Arum said. “All these issues are on the table and they’ll be negotiated. I assume in the negotiation the issue of the pending lawsuit will be discussed.
“Once you start negotiating through the media it becomes an ego contest. Then each side can’t wait to give its statement to the press and the flames just shoot up and there is no real opportunity for rational behavior to take over. Everybody is so interested in setting forth his position to the media that that becomes the contest, and that involved me as well as everybody else [last time].”
“Negotiations are negotiations and a lot of nice things happen if people negotiate in good faith and people want something to happen and negotiate without going through the media,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”
“Is it the fight everyone would like to see? Yeah, it is,” Schaefer said. “But everyone would like to see as well LeBron James against Kobe Bryant in the NBA Finals, or [Roger] Federer against [Rafael] Nadal in the Wimbledon final, or now that World Cup soccer is coming up, the Brazilians against the Italians in the World Cup soccer final.
“Does it always happen? No, it doesn’t. But I don’t think the success of one event is really the beginning or the end of a sport.”
“Jerry [Jones] is certainly interested and so is the MGM,” Arum said. “It will be, if the fight happens, and I hope it will, in mid-November. It would be in one of those two places.”
“I’m not married to Dallas,” he said. “I love Jerry Jones. He’s a terrific guy but I am going to advocate putting any fight of Manny’s where it will do the best and make the most sense and that is not necessarily Dallas.”
“Obviously, there is a plan and we haven’t started negotiations yet,” Arum said. “There is a plan. I don’t want to go into what’s happening but there are things happening on the ground.”
“I have my marching orders and it will be sooner rather than later,” Arum said.
“There will be a [congressional] session during the month of July and then they are off for a few months,” Arum said. “When he is training he runs in the morning, then sleeps, then trains in the gym and then eats dinner and then he has all his free time. He sings, he’s around with his people. A lot of that free time will be devoted to his political responsibilities. He’ll have plenty of time to do his politics while he is in training and out of training.”
“The one activity I know it will affect is his time playing billiards,” Arum said jokingly. “He will have to slow down on that.”
Photo by Chris Farina / Top Rank
