Tag: Todd duBoef

Manny Pacquiao reportedly has no idea who he’ll fight next

The president of MP Promotions said Manny Pacquiao could fight as early as November but isn’t in talks with any perspective opponent.

Manny Pacquiao apparently has nothing substantial in the works for his next fight.

Sean Gibbons, the president of MP Promotions, told Yahoo Sports that there have been no negotiations for his next fight since the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Gibbons said the 41-year-old icon “is just working out in his backyard and not looking at any fights.”

Mikey Garcia has been mentioned as a good candidate to face Pacquiao but Gibbons evidently didn’t mention him. Promoter Bob Arum told PhilBoxing.com that he spoke to Pacquiao about facing fellow titleholder Terence Crawford, but Gibbons said that he’s unaware of that conversation.

Also, Top Rank President Todd duBoef told Yahoo Sports that there has been no movement on Pacquiao vs. Crawford.

Gibbons said he expects Pacquiao to fight in November at the earliest and probably somewhere outside the U.S. There had been talk of Pacquiao fighting in the Middle East before COVID-19 shut everything down.

“The situation this world is in is very fluid right now and things are changing daily, weekly and monthly,” Gibbons said. “I haven’t seen anybody having fights with large amounts of fans yet, and I don’t know really know how to move forward at this point with what is going on.

“I think those discussions will begin in the next month or so if things continue to improve. … So as things get better over the next month, if the Senator was going to target any time, I believe it would be November, December when he’d be looking to get back into the ring somewhere.

“I think the U.S. is a difficult proposition right now given the circumstances and all that has happened. I don’t rule anything out yet. It’s just so early considering the situation in the world.”

Where does Terence Crawford vs. Kell Brook stand?

Terence Crawford seemed to be leaning toward a fight with British veteran Kell Brook when the coronavirus threat took hold a few months ago.

Terence Crawford seemed to be leaning toward a fight with British veteran Kell Brook when the coronavirus threat took hold a few months ago, pushing those discussions to the back burner.

Where do things stand now?

Well, if Top Rank President Todd DuBoef knows, he isn’t saying just yet.

“We’re in a pause right now,” DuBoef told Sky Sports. “Terence is a very, very special fighter, probably pound-for-pound one or two on everybody’s list, in a great division. People have talked about him and Errol Spence, people have talked about him and [Manny] Pacquiao, so he has lots of matches to be made.

“He’s just a special fighter with great boxing ability, power, and he’s come up the ranks by that door opening, and he took that opportunity against [Yuriorkis] Gamboa and really made a name for himself. He’s doing terrific and we look forward to getting him back in the ring as soon as possible.”

Crawford and Brook, a former 147-pound titleholder who has fought as high as 160, seemed to be on track for a fight before the pandemic.

DuBoef acknowledged that Crawford had expressed strong interest in the fight. And Brook went so far as to tell Sky Sports that “everybody is on the same page,” which might be another way of saying an agreement in principal was in place.

Then COVID-19 hit.

“A couple of months ago, in February, there was a lot of chatter about Kell Brook,” DuBoef said. “And Crawford says, ‘I’ll go up in weight, he can come down, I don’t care. I’ll take care of him. I want to fight him.’

“Kell and his team have reached out to us, and I think we were going to … be meeting with him in New York for those March events.”

Brook said he ran into Top Rank CEO Bob Arum on a recent trip to Las Vegas.

“I saw Bob out in America,” he told Sky Sports a few weeks ago. “I seen him walking through the lobby in the MGM Grand. I basically went over and said, ‘You’re running out of opponents for Crawford, and I’m the guy to beat him. I’m here.’

“I saw Terence Crawford. He said he was ready for it. So everybody is on the same page. Everyone wants to make the fight. We just need to make the numbers count for me, for it to make business sense, and then we can get training and get ready for the fight.

“The weight won’t be a problem. Obviously, I’m going to have to get the steppers out, chase the kids around the house, and that will help me get the weight off. I’ve got enough time. If we can agree on what we need to, we can get into gear and we can make welterweight for the world title championship.”

Brook hasn’t fought at 147 pounds since he was stopped by Errol Spence. Jr. in May 2017. He has won three consecutive junior middleweight fights since.

Bob Arum: All fighters could train in one, controlled environment

Bob Arum told ESPN that he and his team are considering small cards and having Top Rank fighters train in a controlled environment.

Promoter Bob Arum is trying to find ways to get the boxing gears turning again amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A few days ago, he raised the possibility of staging fights at World Wrestling Entertainment facilities in Florida after Gov. Ron DeSantis declared WWE events – without spectators – essential business.

On Wednesday, Arum told ESPN that he and his team are considering small cards and having Top Rank fighters train in a controlled environment. Arum has his own gym in Las Vegas.

“What we’re doing is looking at facilities, including our gym, where the guys would have to train,” he said. “You can’t have them in these old gyms because they can pick up the virus that way. But if you clean your gyms and you just let a limited number of people in to train, and then you bring everybody to the location, put them up in a hotel and keep testing them, you can get it done.

“We would sanitize the Top Rank gym, limit the availability to those in the program and bring everybody into Vegas. If the hotels aren’t open, rent them a facility to live in and get them ready when we do open up and we do the events with the testing and so forth, whether it’s in California, Nevada, Texas or Florida, any of those places. So we’re working on all of that, but again, it’s a work in progress because we’re flying blind.”

ESPN reported that the UFC Apex Centre in Las Vegas is another possible venue for boxing. Top Rank President Todd duBoef has been in contact with UFC officials.

“We really have to look at what the leadership of those states are going to be doing in terms of opening up and getting back to easing up the ‘stay at home’ orders and then opening up the states for business, in general,” duBoef said.

“So I think you’ve got to look at the ‘hot’ states and assume they’re not going to be open for a while: New York, New Jersey, possibly California. Some of those hot states will probably take a longer period of time. But once states that are more amenable to hosting events are identified, we hone in on the leadership and the jurisdiction of them, then we can hone in on facilities, specifically.”

Added Arum: “We don’t have the expertise, nobody has expertise to see how this is going to work. We have to take a lot of cues from entities that are better financed than we are and involved at the cutting edge, like the NBA, the NFL, and they would use our program, almost like a laboratory for them when they do roll out.”