Arum not rooting for either of his two proteges

HOLLYWOOD – Bob Arum is keeping it to himself. He will root for no one. Not Manny Pacquiao. Not Miguel Cotto.

“When I made this fight I realized that both of these are my fighters,” said the legendary boxing promoter who doesn’t mind pitting his own boxers against each other as long as it’s the fight that fight fans want to see.

“So, instead of being a cheerleader for Manny as when he fought (Oscar) Dela Hoya and (Ricky) Hatton, in this fight my job is to give each guy the best possible thing to make the best possible fight they could,” he said.

“That’s why we take care of Cotto and we take care of Manny. Both fighters are gonna come prepared. And it’s gonna be a great fight.”

While it should be easy, Arum did work hard to get this fight on, and now that it’s just around the corner he’s glad that the public has shown tremendous interest in what should be the biggest fight of the year.

Arum will be there at ringside of the MGM Grand on Nov. 14 just hoping for a great fight. While seats to the Las Vegas arena have been sold out, he’s also hoping for big returns in the worldwide pay-per-view sales.

“I can’t wait until that Saturday,” he told Pinoy scribes here.

“Everything that’s happening about this fight is really big. We’ve sold out for weeks and you can’t buy a ticket. And that’s good. The closed-circuit locations are great. I’m looking at a big record to be set PPV,” he said.

Pay-per-view sales, at $54.95 per hit, will measure the success of this promotion, and while there are huge numbers to chase, like the 1.25 million hits for Pacquiao-Dela Hoya last December, Arum can only hope for the best.

“There’s just so much interest in this fight that the pay-per-view numbers will be out of sight. But do I know that for sure? No. Nobody does. You need the final number to know for sure how well you’ve down in the pay-per-view and that’s the Tuesday after the fight,” he said.

Arum should be looking at a million buys and nothing less, just because the recent Floyd Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez fight made a million.

“Well, we hope but we don’t know. We don’t want to make any predictions. The cable company and the satellite providers are predicting big numbers. How it turns out we’ll see,” said the promoter who had seen all in boxing.   – Abac Cordero