Arum to convince Pacquiao to fight Mayweather

Top Rank big boss Bob Arum is coming over to the country on Thursday to give support to Manny Pacquiao’s candidacy for a congressional seat in Sarangani and at the same time, discuss another round of negotiations for his mega fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. to take place possibly by the end of the year. While Arum insisted that his visit here – his first since December – is purely a matter of checking on Pacquiao’s chance for a congressional bid, trainer Freddie Roach gave away the veteran boxing promoter by revealing that Arum is set to make an offer on the boxing champion regarding his long-awaited showdown with Mayweather Jr. And Roach sounded very much confident the projected richest fight in the annals of boxing will push through before 2010 is over. “Yes, it is going to happen," said Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer since 2001. “I just talked to Bob Arum. Bob is flying to the Philippines to make Manny the offer. We are going to make this work the best we can." Arum is arriving in Manila early Thursday and will immediately proceed to General Santos City through a connecting flight. The 78-year-old, Harvard-schooled boxing promoter, is staying in the country until Tuesday, a day after the national elections are held. But prior to coming over, Arum made it clear he and Pacquiao won’t be talking about boxing. “As far as I am concerned, I am not even going to raise anything," Arum told ESPN resident boxing writer Dan Rafael. “We’re not even going to talk about future plans until after the elections, and that’s the truth. “What I’m concerned about right now is Manny winning the elections." Roach is saying otherwise. Money – and lots of it – will have a big say on both parties agreeing to do the fight. “I think we have enough ammo to get it done quickly because there is a lot of money out there," he admitted. The issue on Olympic-style drug testing stymied earlier negotiations for a Pacquiao-Mayweather bout. Although the 31-year old Filipino southpaw detested Mayweather’s insistence that both of them be subjected to random-style testing before and after the fight, he was amenable to undertake the procedure at least 24 days before the bout. The Mayweather camp, however, demanded that the drug testing be made 14 days prior to the match, a move Pacquiao and his group turned down. But Roach sees both parties meeting halfway. “We’re going to meet in the middle. They wanted 14. We wanted 24," he said. “We’ll do 17, 18 days." And should all the hitches be resolved, Roach sees a fight being made at the end of the year. “They are talking October, November. Definitely, before the year is out," he said. Meanwhile, Arum is just one of the well-known American personalities visiting the country to see how Pacquiao fares in his second attempt at public office. Former Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Dwyre arrived here Tuesday and is now in General Santos City to make a page 1 story on Pacquiao’s candidacy for a congressional seat. Ditto for former New York Times sports columnist and former Don King publicist Michael Marley. – RCJ, GMANews.TV