ESPN: Arum talks February 21 pay-per-view, including Clottey-Cintron

Dan Rafael of ESPN has a lot of news in this weekend's Notebook (as always), but the most interesting to me is discussion regarding the February 21 Top Rank pay-per-view

Arum also laid out his plans for the rest of the Feb. 21 split-site doubleheader. The telecast will open in New York with heralded 2008 Russian Olympic middleweight Matvey Korobov (2-0, 2 KOs) in a four-rounder. "Then we’re looking to do an Anthony Peterson fight, maybe against [former lightweight titlist] Julio Diaz," Arum said. "If Diaz doesn’t take the fight, we’ll do Peterson against another good opponent." Also on the New York portion of the card, Arum might try to do welterweight titleholder [and New Yorker] Joshua Clottey’s mandatory defense against ex-titleholder Kermit Cintron. That bout would be followed by Cotto-Jennings. Then, Arum said, the telecast "will magically shift" to Youngstown, Ohio, for the main event of the telecast, middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s mandatory against Marco Antonio Rubio. "We’ll have five fights on the broadcast and not a lot of talking," Arum said. Pavlik opens training camp in Youngstown this week, manager Cameron Dunkin said.

So after a couple years worth of complaining that UFC's pay-per-view cards have more complete lineups than boxing's -- and that it wasn't even close in comparison -- here's this, and this is about as good as it gets. To recap:

World Middleweight Championship: Kelly Pavlik v. Marco Antonio Rubio
Vacant WBO Welterweight Title: Miguel Cotto v. Michael Jennings
IBF Welterweight Title: Joshua Clottey v. Kermit Cintron
Anthony Peterson v. Julio Diaz
Matvey Korobov v. TBA

Not bad, huh? There are four legit fights on there, even though Cotto-Jennings is an obvious "comeback fight" for Cotto against an opponent likely overmatched.

Of course, I'd still bet at least a small sum of money it won't quite come off this way, that Peterson won't fight someone as good as Julio Diaz, or that Clottey-Cintron simply isn't fiscally possible to throw on with the rest of the purses, but it'd be great if it did happen. Talk about your bargain PPVs at 30 bones.