And so, as expected by many boxing fans, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum’s deadline for a Nov. 13th fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather came and went.
Was there any question that this was exactly what was going to happen? Not really. As soon as I heard that a fight had been “scheduled” for November 13th, I closely read what Bob Arum had said regarding the supposedly scheduled bout.
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What Arum had said wasn’t that a fight had been “scheduled” but that a fight between his man, Manny Pacquiao, and somebody had been scheduled on Nov. 13th. Arum had stated that, “Manny is going to fight on November 13th. If it’s not Floyd, then it will be somebody else.”
That somebody else now appears to be either Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto. Pac has already knocked out Cotto and Margarito is unlicensed in the U.S. because of a hand wrap scandal that occurred after his loss to Shane Mosely in 2009.
Nobody cares who Pac fights, of course, unless the person he fights is named Floyd Mayweather.
Arum has nobody to blame except himself. He gave an interesting explanation on why the fight between Pac and Floyd won’t take place on Nov. 13th. It was a long, somewhat rambling one, detailing how he “had never spoken” to anybody in Mayweather’s camp. He had just spoken to Ross Greenburg, the President of HBO Sports. Greenburg had asked if “Manny” would be interested in doing the fight.
Arum made a point over the weekend of saying that he just “assumed” that Greenburg was keeping Floyd’s camp involved because Arum had “never spoken” to anybody on the Mayweather side! Yet he had gone ahead and told everybody in the world that a fight was scheduled for November 13th.
This is getting ridiculous, isn’t it? It sounds like Arum, and possibly Greenburg, were trying to construct a fight between Pacquaio and Maywether and that there had never been nothing more than possibly initial conversations between Greenburg and Floyd’s camp. Who knows? Maybe there hadn’t been any conversations between Greenburg and Floyd’s camp at all.
In any case, the fight isn’t on, but as Bob Arum said so succinctly in his babbling message to the media, “People should be understanding. Floyd Mayweather is not saying that he will never fight Manny Pacquiao and Manny Pacquiao is not saying he’s not going to fight. There’s always next year.”
Sure, there’s always next year…unless there isn’t. Floyd will have had a year under his belt as a professional boxer. Manny will have had a year under his belt not only as a professional boxer but also as a politician in the Philippines.
A year can be an eternity in boxing. The truth is that the only two getting hurt in all of this are boxing fans and boxing. The sport needs Floyd vs. Pac and they need it soon.
But they’re going to have to wait for at least another year and let’s be honest, the fight may never happen.
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