By Calvin Watkins, ESPNDallas.com
Boxing promoter Bob Arum said he and Top Rank president Todd duBoef will visit Cowboys Stadium for the Cowboys-Eagles game on Saturday night with the hopes of bringing a Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey fight to Arlington on March 13.
Cowboys spokesperson Brett Daniels said the organization would have no comment regarding a possible fight between Pacquiao-Clottey in Arlington.
Arum said he will talk with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on Sunday to work out the specifics of the bout.
Arum is moving on with a Clottey fight because he was unable to finalize a Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather bout, which was also scheduled for March 13 in Las Vegas.
"Not now," Arum said of a possible Mayweather-Pacquiao bout. "It's a possibility later in the year bur we're not going through that blood stuff again."
A proposed Mayweather-Pacquiao bout was called off on Wednesday night by Arum after mediation failed to resolve their issues over drug-testing protocol.
Mayweather maintained Thursday night that he still wanted to fight Pacquiao. The final issue in the negotiation for the megafight was drug testing.
"First and foremost, not only do I want to fight Manny Pacquiao, I want to whip his punk ass," Mayweather said in a statement on Thursday. "Before the mediation, my team proposed a 14-day, no blood testing window leading up to the fight. But it was rejected. I am still proposing the 14-day window but he is still unwilling to agree to it, even though this is obviously a fair compromise on my part as I wanted the testing to be up until the fight and he wanted a 30-day cut-off. The truth is he just doesn't want to take the tests."
Pacquiao and Mayweather had agreed to unlimited random urine testing, but Mayweather also insisted on random blood testing, even though the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which would oversee the bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, requires only urine testing.
Pacquiao (50-3-2, 38 KOs) didn't want blood testing but later relented and agreed to three blood tests: one during the week of the kickoff news conference, which would have taken place next week, one random test to be conducted no later than 30 days before the fight and a final test in his dressing room after the fight. Mayweather (40-0, 25 KOs) would be subject to the same testing procedures.
When they could not come to an agreement, Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions, which represents Mayweather, turned to a mediator, retired judge Daniel Weinstein, who had successfully mediated a series of disputes between Top Rank and Golden Boy in 2007.
But after nine hours in mediation on Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., and further attempts to come to a resolution on Wednesday failed, the fight was pronounced dead by the Pacquiao camp.
Now, Arum has moved on with a fight with Clottey at Cowboys Stadium. Arum believes they can get 40,000 fans to attend the bout.
"It's a helluva fight," Arum said.
Clottey's manager, Vinny Scolpino, told ESPN.com's Dan Rafael that he spoke to Arum,on Friday about the fight's details but would only confirm a "seven-figure" purse.
"Josh is ecstatic about it," Scolpino said. "I think we can get this done in a couple of days. He's coming home [to New York from Ghana] on Monday."
Clottey (35-3, 20 KOs) last fought in a split decision loss to welterweight titlist Miguel Cotto on June 13, a fight many believed Clottey won.
"It's the biggest payday he ever made in his life," Scolpino told ESPN.com. "He should be doing flips. It's a huge opportunity."
Clottey had last been slated to fight Carlos Quintana on Dec. 5. But that undercard bout was called off when Kelly Pavlik pulled out of the main event against Paul Williams with a lingering hand injury.
Information from ESPN.com boxing writer Dan Rafael was used in this report.
Source: sports.espn.go.com
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