Manny Pacquiao might just have to end up fighting Jeff Horn for his next fight. Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank promotions and long-time promoter for the Filipino eight-division world champion, has conferred recently that his promotional outfit had sent a proposal to Pacquiao negotiating a deal about a fight possibly happening in June or July.
Early January this year the boxing world was a bit dumbfounded when Arum, dangled a certain Jeff Horn, a native of Brisbane, Australia, as next opponent for the Filipino eight-division world champion. Fans had been clamouring and expecting a breath-taking Manny Pacquiao - Terence Crawford match up. But the fight simply would not happen sooner for reasons only Arum knows exactly.
A sigh of relief for the fans, the negotiation between Top Rank and its New Zealand-based counterpart Duco-Events, co-promoter for Horn, failed to come up with an agreement already set in stone. Manny Pacquiao, who himself admitted he did know Jeff Horn, was seemed unhappy with the proposed monetary figure he would be acquiring should he fight the former teacher from down under. Horn's only claim to pugilistic heights was his victory against Ali Funeka, a respectable fighter from South Africa.
To that end, Manny Pacquiao, apparently against Arum's wishes, decided to hunt an alternate opponent, finding Amir Khan through an online poll on twitter. The former classmates under Freddie Roach easily took to social media announcing their fight being officially on, possibly happening in April in the United Arab Emirates. But the supposed $38 million reward money that Pacquiao was said to receive proved to be an insurmountable challenge for the investors who initially promised Pacquiao and his adviser Michael Koncz.
In no time, Pacquiao-Khan, went up the smoke. Arum subsequently declared the fight won't prosper in the first half of the year at least, and offered to explore it at year's end. Meantime, the wily, 85-year-old promoter is proposing an interim fight for Pacquiao. And from indications, the twenty nine-year-old Jeff Horn, most probably, is the principal content of that envelop sent by Arum's camp to Pacquiao. Keith Thurman, recently floated as replacement for Amir Khan, is at present unlikely to win the diminishing Pacquiao derby just for the simple reason that he belongs to other side of the promotional fence.
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