Even Hall of Fame Bob Arum, whose Top Rank Inc. is deeply involved in the May 2 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, doesn’t have spare tickets for those in dire need of them.
Not even celebrities and high-profile politicians, who always get these freebies even during mega fights in the past, won’t be pampered this time, noted the 83-year-old Arum.
“I am not giving anyone tickets for this fight. Everyone will have to pay for tickets,” Arum told the Bulletin yesterday from Los Angeles where a press conference is scheduled on Wednesday at the Nokia Theatre formally announcing the Mayweather-Pacquiao welterweight war.
The details of the ticket prizes will be announced during the press conference and Mayweather Promotions will preside over the affair although Top Rank will not be far behind.
The most expensive ticket will retail at $5,000, while $1,000 is for the cheapest although the public will end up scrambling over scraps as the MGM Grand, the camps of the two fighters, the two promoters and TV outfits Showtime and HBO, would get their share.
The Grand Garden can accommodate over 16,000 and there are plans to reconfigure the seating arrangement so more tickets can be sold.
Meanwhile, the Top Rank publicity team is making an ocular inspection of the venue with ace PR man Lee Samuels coming over from Las Vegas.
“I will have a walk-through tomorrow (today),” Samuels said.
Samuels said that Top Rank has never done a press conference wherein the media was required to apply for credentials just to be allowed to cover.
“I am not sure about Mayweather Promotions but we haven’t done this at Top Rank,” added Samuels, who will be helped out by his able lieutenant, the Spanish-speaking Ricardo Jimenez and Fred Sternburg, the man assigned to trail Pacquiao.
Arum had just landed in the US after staging a show in Macau and was obviously in a bubbly mood, stressing that the first order of the day for him is to check out Pacquiao’s buildup at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.
This week, Pacquiao will start joining hands in training with Freddie Roach, who just returned from Macau, and Arum is thrilled that the two are back in each other’s’ arms.
Pacquiao has been working out with his training assistants, including conditioning coach Justin Fortune, and has been making steady progress even after just over a week in training.