Reports: Guerrero Returns, Pacquiao-Hatton Fight in Trouble

Fans of Robert Guerrero have found him as difficult to view in action recently as his nickname: The Ghost.

That's going to change in less than two weeks, as the 25-year old southpaw returns to action for the first time since knocking out Jason Litzau last February on Jan. 24. The AP is reporting that Guerrero will appear on the Antonio Margarito-Shane Mosley undercard, facing well-traveled (to put it kindly) veteran Edel Ruiz.

Guerrero's inactivity was due to the favorite cause of boxers everywhere, promotional problems. But his career has forward motion again now that he's signed with Golden Boy Promotions. The AP piece says GBP would like to get Guerrero a super featherweight title shot later this year, meaning we could see him take on Humberto Soto or Jorge Linares.

Elsewhere, Michael Rosenthal posted yesterday on The Ring Blog that the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight is in trouble. The reason? You guessed it: money.

Rosenthal quotes both Bob Arum and Freddie Roach while explaining that Pacquiao's lawyer is pushing for a 60-40 split while all other parties seem content with 50-50 - even Roach, who admits that much of the money will come from England.

My guess is that cooler heads will prevail or that an outside force will intervene, as HBO did when the Margarito-Mosley fight ran into a similar hurdle. There isn't a bigger money fight that can be made in boxing today unless one of the fighters can convince Floyd Mayweather to come out of retirement.

Of course Manny has other skills he can fall back on if he has to wait to land another top flight opponent. Any basketball teams in search of a 5-foot-7 combo guard may want to out the MP Warriors of GenSan when they take the court later today.

UPDATE: Well, it didn't take long for GBP to start thinking about Guerrero's next fight - yes, the one after the fight I wrote about above. ESPN's Dan Rafael is reporting that The Ghost may appear as part of an HBO tripleheader on March 7 that will also feature James Kirkland vs. Joel Julio and Victor Ortiz vs. Vivian Harris. With or without Guerrero, that sounds like a great night of boxing.