Bob Arum was interviewed by Gareth A Davies of the Telegraph, and addressed some of his deeper concerns for a fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr:

"It's been an amazing run, that's why I get very very impatient with a lot of this Mayweather nonsense. Because the game plan here is to be president of the Philippines. The game plan is not to be the pound for pound guy for five or six years, it is to transcend boxing and to move on to the rest of his life." ... "One of the reasons I never really was so keen on a Mayweather fight which I now truly believe is an easy fight for Pacquiao is because how Manny is going to be tainted by some of the vile things that Mayweather comes out with. Even though he'll be the good guy, God knows what Mayweather is capable of saying. It's one thing to talk about how much better a fighter he is and Manny can't do this or that, but Mayweather, who has no sensibility in this, is capable of insulting the country. The ignorance is so appalling."

I doubt it would really go down that way. Mayweather has, of course, had his racist rants on his own weird ass web cam show, and he caught a lot of flak for that. But he hasn't brought them to official press functions. Honestly, I think Floyd's so strange that he might have thought that his UStream show wasn't, like -- I don't know how to put this. Like it didn't matter, or that it was an equivalent to speaking out of the public eye at his own dinner table or something.

Now I don't know whether or not there's ever any real chance of Manny Pacquiao becoming President in the Philippines, and I'm not going to pretend I understand the political climate there, because I don't have the first clue, and to be 100% honest, my interest on that level is pretty much zero. I like boxers for their fighting, for the most part, and Manny Pacquiao's political career is only of very minor interest to me. I care mostly about whether or not it gets in the way of his boxing career. I mean that for now -- obviously when he retires, he's retired, and best of luck to him. I don't plan on blaming political aspirations for sending him out too soon, and as Pacquiao plans to fight through 2013, that's not really going to be "too soon" anyway.

But anyway, back to the other thing: No, I don't expect Mayweather would be out there all Mr. Yunioshi or anything, because he's honestly not that stupid. Mayweather, I think, understands that that would be PR suicide, and again, I just think he didn't understand how widespread that UStream stuff can get. I'm not saying he's a genius or anything, but he keeps his cool with press conference type stuff, and "official" interviews, and is no worse than Bernard Hopkins or anyone with those, really.

Anyway, if the fight's so easy, they should probably just do everything in their power to make it happen and let Floyd truly duck if he's going to do that. Mayweather could insult the entire country of the Philippines right now without the fight happening if he really wanted to, so I can't see that as a valid concern for not doing the fight.