LOS ANGELES, April 21 – Manny Pacquiao’s teleconference call on Monday was abruptly halted just minutes after it began with promoter Bob Arum delivering an obscenity before telling organizers to shut it down.
“Oh (expletive),” Arum said after the moderator said the first question would come from Michael Marley of Examiner.com. “Do this call some other time. Let’s reorganize and do this call some other time, please.”
Pacquiao and trainer Freddie Roach commented briefly before the call was taken over by Arum who had said earlier he wasn’t happy with the idea of it.
“We are ready to go. We had a great training camp and good sparring partners,” Roach said of the mega showdown with Floyd Mayweather on May 2 at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.
Asked how his training was going Pacquiao simply said, “very good.”
Reporters were then told Pacquiao had boxed 12 rounds in a sparring session on Saturday.
There was no mention of tickets for the fight which are still not up for sale with the mega fight just two weeks away. The contracts with the MGM also remain unsigned and there is no word on the closed circuit television.
But when the call was opened up to questions that is when Top Rank chief executive Bob Arum shut it down.
Top Rank released a statement saying the call system crashed because of the overwhelming number of media trying to join the session.
“At the top of the hour there were a massive number of calls from the media,” Top Rank said in a statement. “Our conference call system which worked for years literally went down and we were unable to communicate with our operators. This was very unfortunate and we apologize.”
Arum told Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports that he didn’t like the format of the call and thought it should be limited to a small group of news reporters. “It was going to be an absolute disaster. I said we either do it the right way or we won’t do it. The best way is to get four or five of the top guys and put them on the phone. I didn’t want Manny on there having to listen to all this nonsense.”
There was no word when or if the call would be rescheduled.
