Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: Bob Arum Still Standing in Way of Title Fight

The date for Floyd Mayweather's next fight is already set. Just don't expect Manny Pacquiao to show.

That is, until Bob Arum, the CEO of Top Rank and Pac-Man's personal promoter, steps aside and lets these two welterweight champions meet in the match that everyone both within and without the sport of boxing wants to see.

Fat chance, and not simply because Arum has let himself go a bit in his old age. While both camps have handled the arrangements poorly, Arum still sticks out as the sore thumb with an ever-expanding Rolodex of excuses for why his most precious client won't climb between the ropes and touch gloves with Money May.

None of the ones expressed involve the possibility of Pacquiao getting beat down—a distinct one given his controversial victory over Juan Manuel Marquez, whose prowess as a defensive fighter pales in comparison to that of Mayweather.

Among the reasons Arum has thus far floated for Pac-Man "turning down" Mayweather's previous offers: a cut, an aversion to the invasiveness of the Olympic-style drug testing about which Pretty Boy Floyd has been insistent, Mayweather's jail sentence (which has since been delayed to account for his booking of the MGM Grand Garden Arena for a May 5th fight), and most recently, Arum's desire to have a temporary 45,000-seat outdoor stadium erected on the Las Vegas Strip to milk even more money out of a proposed mega-fight.

Call me presumptuous, but it appears as though Arum is shielding Pacquiao from the fight, refusing to subject his star talent to the distinct possibility of defeat in the biggest fight in boxing history, at least until he can extract some more millions first.

Of course, with the likes of Lamont Peterson and Tim Bradley awaiting their turn to fight Pacquiao and Amir Khan his at Mayweather, the two biggest prizes in boxing still have other smaller, though still noteworthy, fish that they can and probably will fry in the interim.

In that case, boxing fans would have to wait for Mayweather to finish up his 90-day jail sentence before he can engage in some good old-fashioned pugilism with Pacquiao—his foil-from-a-distance. With good behavior, Mayweather could ostensibly be out of the slammer much sooner than that and back in the ring by November or December.

Certainly, contractors in Sin City, known around the world for tearing down and erecting superstructures in the blink of an eye, are capable of constructing an Arum-approved stadium by then.

Unfortunately for the boxing world, such a delay also gives Arum plenty of time to come up with another laundry list of excuses to keep Pacquiao away from Mayweather—the long-term health of pugilism be damned.

Follow @J0shMart1n