Manny keeps options open for next match

GENERAL SANTOS CITY – Manny Pacquiao has yet to sit down with his promoter Bob Arum and has left all options open as to when he would return to the ring, whom to face and where to stage the fight.

Pacquiao was all over town yesterday as he prepared to host a big birthday party set in the evening. In a very brief conversation, he said there’s nothing new regarding his next fight.

Arum, who came here with trainer Freddie Roach to celebrate with the boxer and a thousand more guests, is thinking of May 2 or May 9 as the day Pacquiao returns to the ring after his recent win.

“Five months?” Pacquiao asked.

Then he paused, as if he wasn’t ready to say yes or no to Arum’s plan. For the meantime, he wants to party, and in a few days, on Dec. 21 or 23, will fly back to Los Angeles to be with his pregnant wife, Jinkee.

“We haven’t talked,” said Pacquiao, referring to Arum and Roach. A meeting could take place this morning before the promoter and trainer flies back home in the evening.

“I will lay it down before him, and leave it at that,” Arum said.

Pacquiao will bring their three kids, Jimwell, Michael and Princess, to the US, and they will celebrate the Christmas holidays in Los Angeles while they await the birth of their fourth child, a girl.

Arum said negotiations are ongoing with the Ricky Hatton camp regarding a possible match with Pacquiao, who was named by the World Boxing Council as the “Boxer of the Year.”

Arum is confident that a fight with Hatton will surpass the pay-per-view sales of Manny Pacquiao’s recent bout with Oscar dela Hoya.

Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound king, and Dela Hoya, then the pay-per-view king, fought before 15,000 fans at the MGM Grand last Dec. 6 and drew close to 1.4 million PPV hits worldwide.

Arum said these numbers should be surpassed by a Pacquiao-Hatton showdown, and if everything works out well the fight should be held either at the Thomas and Mack Center or Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas.

“Dela Hoya was the biggest thing in boxing,” said Arum of the Golden Boy who holds the pay-per-view record of 2.4 million buys for a single fight – the one he had with Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year.

Dela Hoya lost to Mayweather by decision, and took a very painful eighth-round TKO defeat to Pacquiao. There are calls for him to retire but there are also talks about a farewell fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.

Arum is looking forward to Pacquiao vs Hatton.

“Hatton has the popular fan base but in the United States, of course, he’s not Dela Hoya,” the Top Rank big boss said.

However, it’s in England, Hatton’s country, where PPV sales will definitely sweeten the pot.

“The key here is Hatton has an unbelievable pay-per-view business in England and if you put it together with the American pay-per-view probably the number will be higher than the Dela Hoya-Pacquiao.

”If you put the numbers of the Pacquiao-Hatton in England and the Pacquiao-Hatton in the United States together you probably will exceed the Dela Hoya-Pacquiao numbers the 1.4 million,” Arum said.

The Dream Match generated PPV sales of $70 million. Fifty percent goes to the operational and promotional costs, and the remainder will be split between the two camps – 68 percent for Dela Hoya and 32 percent for Pacquiao.

Based on computations, Pacquiao stands to earn close to $11 million more from his PPV shares, and with reported guaranteed purse of $6 to $10 million will have a lot of counting to this Christmas.