Manny Pacquiao snubs MGM Grand

LAS VEGAS — Manny Pacquiao is not feeling much love for the hotel where he will fight Floyd Mayweather Jr in boxing’s richest fight ever.

Pacquiao plans to skip Tuesday’s ceremony at MGM Grand that will mark formal fighter arrivals, an event that has been standard at the hotel for major championship fights.

The eighth-division champion will stay at another hotel on the Las Vegas Strip and will have his after-fight party at yet another hotel, the Wynn.

Promoter Bob Arum, who has been embroiled in a dispute with the hotel over tickets, said Pacquiao would go to the MGM only for the final pre-fight press conference, the weigh-in and the fight itself.

“We’re not going to stay there any more than we have to, because we know the way it has been acting — we’re not welcome,’’ Arum said.

Pacquiao will head to Las Vegas on Monday after a final four-round sparring session at Wild Card gym in Hollywood, driving to the fight capital in a car alongside a bus carrying his supporters.

He will stay at the Delano in Mandalay Bay, where he almost always stays for his fights.

What is different this time is that Pacquiao will not appear at the ceremony on Tuesday in the lobby of MGM Grand, where thousands of fans would be expected to be present to cheer for both fighters. Generally, the boxers also do interviews with a group of writers after their arrival.

“We told them we’re coming in on Monday night and are going to Mandalay Bay. We’re not doing a grand arrival at the MGM,” Arum said. “We’ll have the press go over to Mandalay Bay and do an interview with Manny there.”

The MGM Grand Garden is where Pacquiao has won his biggest fights, including bouts against Oscar de la Hoya, Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton.

This will be the Filipino’s 12th fight at the hotel which, for the past two decades, has hosted most of the biggest fights in Las Vegas.

However, Arum feuded with MGM executives during Pacquiao’s last fight at the MGM against Timothy Bradley last April, when the hotel featured a huge picture of Mayweather on its facade advertising his next fight.

Pacquiao went to Macau for his last fight, a decision win over Chris Algieri that drew a packed house at the Venetian arena there.

The feud has escalated in recent weeks as Arum believes MGM executives were conspiring with Mayweather’s camp to give the American more tickets to the fight than allowed under contract.

Those ticket rights are worth millions of dollars even at list prices, with the house scaled to about US$72 million (S$96 million).

The dispute was finally resolved this week and about 500 tickets went on sale to the public on Thursday.

They were quickly snapped up, while tickets on the secondary ticket market were being listed at three to four times the face value for the cheapest US$1,500 nosebleed seats to more than US$100,000 for the ringside floor seats. AP