Michael Marley
5/26/2007
Notes on the back of an envelope:
If Oscar De La Hoya wants to burnish his positive public image, I got just the ticket for him. If he is the president of boxing, and in many ways he is, then can do the sport a major service by doing one simple thing. ODLH needs to sit down with Uncle Bob Arum and their respective lawyers and settle the Manny Pacquaio litigation.
Let Golden Boy get some money, let Top Rank keep Pacman and then let’s move on to the real money that both promotional concerns would make by making Juan Manuel Marquez-Pacquaio, or Joan Guzman-Pacquiao or even Marco Antonio Barrera-Pacquaio, assuming MAB is still obligated contractually to GBP. In one fell swoop, Oscar could be viewed as taking the high road, putting the health of the beleaguered sport above his own selfish concerns and, yet, at the same time he would be insuring that some lucrative bouts happen.
If one of his guys beats Pacquaio, wouldn't that be especially satisfying to a competitor like ODLH? And there's little doubt that Marquez and/or Guzman could accomplish that.
This just in to our studio, from the Cebu Sun-Star newspaper:
"Pacquiao wrote the WBC and asked its president, Jose Sulaiman, to give the mandatory challenger status to another fighter.
A report in a national daily quoted Michael Koncz, Pacquiao’s Canadian confidant, saying the General Santos City puncher signed a three-paragraph letter asking Sulaiman to designate another challenger to Juan Manuel Marquez’s September fight.
The WBC has named Pacquiao as the mandatory challenger to then WBC super featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera in Oct. 26 last year during its Convention in Croatia.
Barrera lost his belt to Marquez last March and just last week WBC ordered the camps of Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez to a free negotiation and gave them a June 18 deadline. If the deadline passes, a purse bid will follow.
However, it is difficult for Top Rank (Pacquiao’s promotional outfit) and Golden Boy Promotions (Marquez’s promoters) to come up with a deal because they are currently locked in a court battle for the right to promote the Filipino warrior.
Top Rank’s Bob Arum also said they will never participate in a purse bid because the bigger share of the purse will go to Marquez, who Arum thinks isn’t the drawing card."
There you go, judge and jury. That's Michael Marley's Exhibit A. This is why Oscar needs to call off his legeal bloodhounds.
By doing so, Oscar would come off as the good guy. He could polish his halo a bit more. And the easy spin would be that Oscar decided to settle the matter for the good of all the fighters involved. I mean, he’s the guy who says he puts the fighters first, that GBP is the company that really cares about the welfare of the boxers, right?
Here’s an opportunity to make peace over Pacman and to put some substance into those claims. I’m not talking just about boxing here, I’m talking about statesmanship.
What do you say, Mr. President? Discuss this with Henry Kissinger, er I mean Richard Schaefer. The only winners in the situation now are the barristers, Daniel Petrocelli on Arum’s side and Bert Fields on your side.
I’m not saying you’ll be whisked to Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize, Oscar, but you would come off as hero in some very important consttituencies, in particular in the Phillipines and Mexico.
You would be perceived then as both a gentlemen and a nobleman. And you really would be doing what is best for boxing.
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I wonder how many other guys my advanced age will be watching Lidell and "Rampage" get it on tonight? I guess I don't fight the demographic but I will be paying and watching anyway. UFC got the cover of ESPN The Magazine, a Sports Illustrated cover and several stories in the New York Times. Ignore MMA at your peril...
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
