manny just kept climbing up the ranks. he was fighting huge guys. it eventually took a toll on him. i still wish to this day he stayed around the smaller weights a little longer. all it takes is one guy to spice things up. should of been around 135 or 140 .. for much of his career. but he wanted to make that fast cash and fight the bigger guys.
dude is 86 years old and slugging it out in the trenches with the youngsters having made the greatest fights in the last 50 years. yeah. we're all ***gots.
A fighter from the Philippines, fighting at the lower weights, becomes a household name in the United States, not to mention worldwide, and fights everybody from flyweight to welterweight. The ppv’s the titles, the publicity. Manny’s career is unthinkable without a great promoter in the picture.
Absolutely. He managed to market him incredibly well whilst also not coping to much flack from the general public for some less then stellar opponents. Hindesight tells us he would have gone undefeated fighting just about anyone during his peak years but its not a promoters job to risk their prize pig un necceserily
Top Rank has the best eye for talent and fighter development in boxing history as a promotion. Respect to Don King Promotions but most of his fighter were guys he got from other promoters, he has never built them from the ground like Arum has. He still has the best fighters when you really look at who is dipping and dodging who around the sport. Stevenson just got put in a coma by Gvozdyk (TR fighter) after 5 years of fighting below his level and it caught up to him. Eleider Alvarez holds the 175 WBO title and KO'd the man that Stevenson was running from the past 3 years. Mikey Garcia and Spence are ducking Crawford and Lomachenko so bad they rather fight each other. Manny Pacquiao ran off like a lil ole ***** to fight weak ass Adrien " The Drinking Problem" Broner to duck Terence Crawford. I guarantee he won't get $10 million to fight A.B. and there won't be a May/Pac 2. Thats just an excuse for him, it was never gonna happen. Top Rank also has 3 well known up and coming fighter that we get to see beening built into stars, Teofimo Lopez, Shakur Stevens, and Michael Conlan.
Around the time Manny TKOed Jorge Solis, it began to look like Manny's popularity had plateaued. Most fans, including me, did really see how Manny could top finishing Erik Morales twice. After finishing the series with Morales 2-1, Manny was wobbled in an unexpectedly tough tuneup fight with Oscar Larios, getting taken twelve rounds. Although he finished Solis, he also looked a step removed from being the usual killing machine we were accustomed to. It looked like the early signs of burnout while Manny's star had reached its apparent zenith. Wrong. His successive rematches against Barrera and Marquez did roughly a combined half million PPV buys. Then came the Henry Armstrong esque surge, where he played the divisions like a piano. He wracked up 2,000,000 buys in 2008, blitzing the top P4P spot. When it looked like Manny had NOW reached a climax after beating Oscar, Arum and Manny outdid themselves again. In 2009 Manny stacked another 2,000,000+ buys with two wins that were even more impressive against Hatton and Cotto. Even when the pair were facing pretty serious backlash over the perception they were to blame for the collapse of the Mayweather fight, Manny still did close to one million buys against Josh Clottey, a guy known practically only to hardcore fans. I also found Arum handling of Manny impressive after the kayo loss to Marquez in fight IV. That was intelligent match-making and good promotion. It also was a recognition of the fact that it was now or never to earn that titanic payday with Floyd. Since the Jesse Vargas fight, things have gotten a little weird with Manny's career, but I almost have to chalk the up to stuff on Manny's end becoming just too out of control. In short, Arum helped Manny max his talents out, especially considering that Manny only spent a fraction of his time being a boxer, with the rest devoted to raising his kids, cheating on his wife, gambling, shooting guns, running for the Senate, playing pool, sing (barely), acting, endorsing products, playing basketball. He also skillfully helped Manny dodge the fallout from the PED controversy which sabotaged the Mayweather fight, made all the more impressive by the fact that he was prooooooobably actually using them. But he never got tagged with the perception that he was a cheater, unlike Holyfield, Mosely and others.
Let me think. One of the most famous boxers of all time. Made close to a billion dollars. Yeah, I think he did alright.
bobs a real gangster, still got the juice to hold whats his when most are in diapers getting wheeled around.
I will say this I think had Manny stayed at 140lbs he might have been able to get FlIVd into the ring. FlIVd would've made him come up to 147 thinking he had the size advantage and would've gotten wrecked. I agree with you, I would've preferred MP stayed below 147 but he thought he was going to get the FlIVd fight.
Well, he got the biggest star in the sport, who said he'd never work with Arum again, to fight Pacquiao in the highest selling fight ever.
Didnt Murad Muhammad get him the 3 biggest fights of his career? Barrera, Marquez and Morales? I don't think that was Arum. With that said Pacquiao become a global icon in the late 2000s a few years after those fights under the promotion of Bob Arum. But a lot of that had to do with the fact that he moved up to Welterweight. it's hard to market a 126 pound Filipino to Americans. No matter how exciting his fights are. But you got to give some credit to Bob Arum too.