Bob Arum: Shane Mosley leads races for Manny Pacquiao
Bob Arum has confirmed “Sugar” Shane Mosley is leading the races for an upcoming bout with boxing sensation Manny Pacquiao.
In a recent interview with the examiner.com, the big-time Top Rank promoter indicated that Mosley was a leading candidate to fight Pacquiao in the future due to his vast marketability, as opposed to alternative candidate Juan Manuel Marquez.
Both Mosley and Marquez have been touting a fight with “Pacman” following his November 13 schooling of Mexican Antonio Margarito.
Margarito, the much bigger opponent, succumbed to the superior footwork and choosy combinations of Pacquiao, finally finding himself in a hospital with a broken right orbital bone following 12 rounds of punishment.
Arum outlined the logic behind Mosley being an attractive next opponent for Pacquiao: “Don’t forget, Mosley beat Oscar (De La Hoya) twice and had a fight with (Floyd) Mayweather. Mosley has just been on the big stage for a long, long time and people know
who he is," Arum said.
“It’s not about Marquez’s boxing ability. It is all about the marketing of the fight...The truth is, Marquez is not even a big seller in the Mexican market," Arum continued.
He mentioned the likes of Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera and Antonio Margarito, top Mexican draws, as points of comparison.
There is also the reality that a second fight between Pacquiao and Marquez in 2008, while entertaining to many hardcore boxing fans, only drew 400,000 pay-per-view buys.
Pacquiao’s November clash with Margarito, on the other hand, nearly tripled the figure with upwards of 1.15-million pay-per-view buys.
As well, a clash between Mosley and Floyd Mayweather Jr. remains the most watched fight of 2011, with more than 1.4 million people dishing out to watch the HBO pay-per-view.
“I don’t worry about who the bloggers think is the best opponent,” Arum admitted. “I really don’t care what the writers say or even what the hardcore boxing followers say when it comes to this. I know we need to pick the opponent who is the most familiar
to the casual sports fan, the casual boxing fan who cannot name all the fighters.”
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