Arum sees a big 2008 for Pacquiao and Cotto

Arum sees a big 2008 for Pacquiao and Cotto

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The New Year had just started and promoter Bob Arum was already having a happy one. Speaking by telephone from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico on Tuesday, Arum was thrilled that his recently concluded trip to the Philippines ended up bearing fruit. Arum may have been there to help Manny Pacquiao celebrate his 29th birthday, which fell on Dec. 17, but Arum admittedly had an ulterior motive when he accepted Pacquiao's invitation.
Not that Arum wouldn't have gone anyway if everything was good. But since everything wasn't, Arum wasn't going to pass on the opportunity to make it all good.

“The main purpose was because he asked me to come and celebrate his birthday,” Arum said. “And I knew that Freddie (Roach) was going as well so we used that visit to convince Manny to train for two months at the Wild Card Gym (in Hollywood).”
Pacquiao will take on Juan Manuel Marquez on March 15 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. They will tangle for Marquez's world super featherweight championship. It is a rematch of their May 2004 fight that ended in a draw after Marquez got up from three first-round knockdowns.
Pacquiao did the bulk of his training for his October rematch with Marco Antonio Barrera in his native Philippines. Pacquiao won the fight, but he never hurt Barrera the way he hurt him in their first fight in November 2003, when Pacquiao stopped Barrera in the 11th round. Pacquiao training in the Philippines also did not help Arum do his job as his promoter.

“We both came from different positions,” Arum said of he and Roach, Pacquiao's trainer. “Freddie's, of course, (was) that spending two months at the Wild Card would condition (Manny) best, get him ready best for Marquez. And mine, the advantage of him being (in the states) for two months gives us the opportunity to promote him to a wider audience than just to Mexicans and Filipinos because we've been hampered by his coming over (to the U.S.) the week before the fight.”
Arum said that this rematch with Marquez is already looming large in the eyes of the boxing public. He said it was therefore imperative that Pacquiao train at Wild Card. And he will.
“I didn't look at this fight as anything more special than the (Erik) Morales or Barrera fights, but it's created a tremendous buzz with the Mexicans down here in Mexico now and that's all they're talking about is that fight. I will have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of promotions with Manny that aren't just Filipino- and Mexican-motivated. I'm going to have him on a lot of shows just so more people know who he is.”

Bill Caplan, Arum's longtime publicist, was the third man on the line Tuesday. He informed Arum that “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” was going to go back on the air without striking writers and that he is going to see about getting Pacquiao on that show. Arum said that Pacquiao is a talented singer who likes doing Beatles songs and that a gig like that would be quite a coup.
There doesn't seem to be much love lost between Pacquiao and Marquez, especially on the part of Marquez, who has been saying he is going to knock out Pacquiao. So Arum wants to take full promotional advantage of everything this fight has to offer.
“I can sense how huge this fight is becoming,” Arum said. “We've been in the 350- to 400,000 pay-per-view buys range for his (Pacquiao's) fights and we're looking to do 500,000 buys on this fight.”
There was something else on Arum's mind Tuesday as he rang in the New Year down in ol' Mexico. What is going to happen next for his welterweight champion, Miguel Cotto? The possibilities are endless for the Puerto Rican superstar, but the fight that should happen probably won't – a title unification with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
The other marquee name out there that would bring both Arum and Cotto loads of money would be Oscar De La Hoya, who is supposed to make his decision on his next opponent any day now.
“We're going to wait another few days,” Arum said. “Oscar's wife (Millie) had another baby, so we're waiting on Oscar. If Oscar is going to fight, he's going to have to make it known in the next few days.”
A Cotto-De La Hoya fight would take place in May. Arum said if it's not De La Hoya, then Cotto would fight in either March or April and then take on former welterweight champion Antonio Margarito in June or July. The fight in March or April could be against one of three fighters – Alfonso Gomez, champion Kermit Cintron or highly ranked Joshua Clottey.
“We're not looking to do gimmie fights at this time,” Arum said. “Gimmie fights are bad for the public.”