Pacquiao vs Mayweather won’t happen yet <>Hopkins

THE former undisputed middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins expects that Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather won’t reach a deal for their proposed mega fight next year.

Instead, the superstars will be facing different opponents for their next bouts early next year.

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Hopkins believes Pacquiao will be gunning for a record eighth division world title against undefeated World Boxing Organization junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman.

Mayweather will be in a super fight against World Boxing Association welterweight titleholder Shane Mosley, where the winner will face the 30-year-old Filipino pound-for-pound king.

“Mayweather will fight Shane Mosley before he fights Pacquiao.

Pacquiao is probably going to fight the Jewish kid at 154, and Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather are going to fight. And then the winner will fight Pacquiao for all the marbles – by late next year. All of that is going to happen. That’s my prediction,” said the 44-year-old Hopkins at boxingscene.com.

He is scheduled to see action on Dec. 2 against Enrique Ornelas.

Hopkins thinks Pacquiao will be successful if he moves up in weight and challenges Foreman, who is also handled by Bob Arum’s Top Rank promotional outfit.

“They’re all gonna talk but they ain’t going to get the deal done. Arum doesn’t want to deal. At the end of the day, I think it’s going to be Sugar Shane and Mayweather and the winner will fight Pacquiao. And Pacquiao will fight at 154. Pacquiao has nobody else to fight to make that money. He’s going to fight Arum’s fighter, that Jewish kid who won the title and Pacquiao is going to win a title at 154,” he said.

Pacquiao demolished all the fighters he faced in his abrupt rise in three different weight categories. He stopped David Diaz in the ninth round in the lightweight category; knocked out Ricky Hatton in the second round in the light welterweight category; and destroyed both Oscar de la Hoya, in the eighth, and Miguel Cotto, in the 12th, in the welterweight division.