With various reports coming out that the sport's number one pound for pound fighter Manny Pacquiao will not fight the former undefeated American pound for pound fighter Floyd Mayweather Jr on March 13th as planned and hoped by many of the general public, it has also now been reported that Pacquiao will be fighting instead former IBF welter weight champion Joshua Clottey from Ghana at the new Dallas Cowboys football stadium in Arlington, Texas.There have been articles coming out with statements from Pacquiao's promoter Bob Arum as well as his trainer Freddie Roach stating that the fight with Clottey is a go and all set.
Even if you look up the on and off again trusty site of BoxRec it has the March 13th, 2010 fight all set for Manny Pacquiao vs Joshua Clottey taking place at the Cowboys Stadium with even the return of Antonio Margarito fighting on the under card, as well as Jose Luis Castillo. If you look below that fight card it even shows another fight card happening on the very same night with Floyd Mayweather Jr fighting a "To Be Announced" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
So what does one make of all this? Well first off as much as we love BoxingRec for looking up our favorite fighter's records it is not the most reliable source when determining upcoming future fights. It had the Pacquiao vs Mayweather fight listed as taking place on March 13th, 2010 at the MGM Grand just a week ago, meaning it has been known to post fights before they were indeed signed sealed and delivered.
So what is the point of this article then you may be asking yourself? The point is Bob Arum has been known to prematurely announce fights to be taking place at new extravagant locations as if he has like some sort of publicity deal to talk about having his next big fight there even though it never actually does end up there.
For example ever since Pacquiao destroyed Erik Morales in their rubber match in 2006 at the Thomas and Mack Center, Arum was talking about having Pacquiao's next fight at the brand new Wynn Macau in China. He kept saying Pacquiao's next fight will be held there after each fight that Pacquiao won for the next several fights. Well Pacquiao went on to fight 7 more times and winning each fight but none of them ever took place at the Wynn Macau. So it made me wonder if he promised to say the next fight would take place at the Wynn Macau he would be getting compensated in some way.
I've personally stayed at Wynn's Bellagio and Encore both comped and they were so nice that even I would mention the Wynn resorts whenever I could possible if I could some how be compensated or even have more future free comped stays at the Wynn resorts wink wink.
So back to Pacquiao's fight with Clottey it has all the making of a great fight. Clottey is a true welter weight who gives hell to all of his opponents. Nobody ever has a easy fight with the Ghanan former champion known as Grand Master.
However it is my personal belief that I am not completely sold that this fight will indeed be happening until I see the tickets go on sale. When the tickets actually officially go on sale then that is when a fight is indeed signed and sealed in my opinion.
If you go to the website of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium site and the event calendar for March you will see the fight is not yet posted and the tickets are not available in their system nor or they available via Ticketmaster. http://stadium.dallascowboys.com/events/index.cfm?action=month&month=3&year=2010
With only 8 more weeks to go until the supposed fight of Pacquiao vs Clottey would they actually be able to successfully pull it off with that small of a time line?
Floyd Mayweather's situation is even worse. He is supposedly headlining the MGM Grand all by himself on March 13th without even an opponent? As great as Mayweather is he had trouble selling out the MGM Grand against the greatest Mexican fighter of our generation on a Mexican holiday.
So what’s the moral of the story my friends? It is simple, wait until the tickets go on sale before you believe the hype.
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