Michael Marley
6/28/2007

CORRECTIONS AND EVENING UPDATE: "Newsky Ike" cannot stay off the phone. Our informant says the settlement papers will be thrust into the hot little hands of both sides on Friday, that an announcement would be forthcoming after everyone signs off, there will be no press conference to shout the news from the rooftops and that Pacquaio-Barrera is more likely for Las Vegas than for LA October 6.)

 

 

The pieces to the puzzle are being put into place. Now the lawyers on both sides are carefully crafting the peace agreement in which Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya will bury their legal hatchets.

 

It’s going to be a “universal settlement,” which legal parlance for a global deal ending any and all legal disputes between the two giant promoters. As they draft, redraft and redraft documents again and again, tentative plans have already been made for a huge LA press conference to announce that their promotional wars have ended.

 

“It’s moving right along,” my inside source in Los Angeles told me at high noon Thursday. “This would not make for enthralling TV. It would be pay per few as the legal drones go on and on. It’s like the old saying, you might love to eat sausages but you wouldn’t want to watch them being made.”

 

Boxingconfidential.com has confirmed that Arum and Top Rank have a hold on the Staples Center in LA for October 6. That’s when Top Rank and their new best friends, ODLH, Richie Rich Schaefer and the Golden Boy posse would stage Manny Pacquaio-Marco Antonio Barrera II. Whether that fight will be on HBO or HBO PPV seems to be undecided.

 

“Arum thinks it will be a quicker live gate sellout in SoCal than it would be in Las Vegas,” our source who uses the handle “Newsy Ike” informed me. “In this case, Golden Boy agreed but it’s not say that the MGM Mirage guys won’t come along and knock the Staples Center people out of the box with a nifty site fee.”

 

(mlcmarley@aol.com or by phone 917 853 4484)