Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has turned down the bid of the famed Araneta Coliseum to stage the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr super fight claiming that in the first place Mayweather won’t agree to fight in the Philippines.
George “Nene” Araneta, owner of the famed coliseum that played host to the “Thrilla in Manila” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on October 1, 1975 had requested us to inquire from Arum what it would take to stage the fight in Manila and to provide him a number in terms of the cost.
Arum responded “there is no number. Forget it.”
In an overseas telephone conversation this morning (Tuesday in Manila) Arum said besides “Mayweather is not going to come over to Manila to fight and our pay-per-view revenue would go to shit. Its too far away.”
While conceding that the Ali-Frazier fight was done at the Araneta Coliseum, Arum pointed out that “the closed circuit in the US was lousy.”
Arum said “everything is good” and an official statement would be made “probably by the end of the week” after he, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schafer and HBO Sports Ross Greenburg meet with Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones who built a state-of-the-art $1.2 billion stadium and is interested in staging the fight in the venue which can accommodate 100,000 fight fans.
Arum said “we promised the Dallas people that we would listen to them and then we’ll have a meeting with the MGM and then we’ll decide. Everything is fine.” He said they would make an announcement on both the fight and the venue not on his 78th birthday tomorrow which was the initial plan, but on the weekend.
Arum said Pacquiao’s training camp will be in Baguio City and that “the only change is that we are thinking of moving everything up on the press conferences to the week before the fight because that will give the fighters more time to train. That’s what we’re working on.”
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