If anyone is still holding out hope that pound-for-pound champion Manny Pacquiao may choose WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto as his next opponent, you might want to pass that optimism on to his own promoter, Lou DiBella. Although a source already informed FightHype.com that Berto was officially out of the running for the Pacquiao sweepstakes, DiBella has now come on record echoing those same sentiments. "I don't have an expectation, I have a certainty, and the certainty is that the sweepstakes, it never really existed. The sweepstakes has been rigged. You know, Bob said probably that Marquez was out of the running even though he supposedly is in the sweepstakes, and other than my initial conversation when Bob said that I had made a fair offer, I haven't heard one other peep out of Bob," Dibella would reveal in a recent interview with David Castro of AOL Latino and Fanaticos. "So, and Shane, you know, apparently, I think that's it's sort of preordained, Shane Mosley's going to get the fight, so I'm going to be looking at something else for Andre Berto because he's not going to get the opportunity."
According to DiBella, neither Berto or lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez ever had a real shot of getting the fight due to Bob Arum's preference to only match Pacquiao against other Top Rank fighters or fighters that currently representing themselves as free agents, as is the case with three-division world champion and former Golden Boy Promotions partner Shane Mosley. "I think they had a preference all along for Mosley. There policy of fighting in-house is completely well-known all over the industry right now; that they want to fight their own fighter against their own fighter," DiBella added. "Shane Mosley left Golden Boy. Shane Mosley's a free agent, so now he's with Top Rank, so it's another Top Rank versus Top Rank."
While members of Team Pacquiao, including Arum and adviser Michael Koncz, maintain that all three fighters - Mosley, Berto and Marquez - are all still viable options, it seems like everybody else is of the opinion that a fight with Shane Mosley is virtually a done deal. According to reports, Pacquiao is due to make a decision some time shortly after his 32nd birthday this Friday. Considering that Mosley himself has been saying ever since a November meeting with Arum that he's next in line to face Pacquiao, it's sounding more and more like everyone is of the opinion that the decision has already been made for the birthday boy.
[ Follow Ben Thompson on Twitter @fighthype ]