This was bared by Pacquiao’s longtime promoter Bob Arum while attending a series of media briefings for the upcoming title fight between Pacquiao and unbeaten Australian challenger Jeff Horn at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane Australia.
“I’ve been talking to people in the Philippines and they want Manny to fight in Manila,” Arum told ESPN. “We would do it in the same way we are doing this fight with Horn, where we would put it on Sunday morning in the Philippines so we could have it on in prime time in the United States on a Saturday night and we would also probably do it with ESPN.”
Arum is banking on a number of resorts and casinos in the Manila Bay area that have shown interest in backing the staging of the proposed fight financially.
Pacquiao has been prodding Arum to make arrangement for him to fight again in Manila before his retirement from the sport. Now that there are interested parties willing to back up the fight, Arum should be able to constitute a fight card from his Top Rank stable of young and promising challengers.
Arum has mentioned as Pacquiao’s possible foe 24-year-old Top Rank fighter from Russia Konstantin Ponomarev (32-0, 13 KOs), who has fought in the undercard of Pacquiao’s third fight against Timothy Bradley in April last year.
Pacquiao admitted that there are indeed ongoing discussions about his possible fight in the Philippines.
“We’re discussing fighting in my country,” said Pacquiao, who was joined by Arum in a conference call in Brisbane ahead of the July 2 fight. “We’re working on that,” he added.
Pacquiao’s last fight in the Philippines was on July 2, 2006 against Oscar Larios at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, which he won via a unanimous decision.
