Top Rank Inc. CEO Bob Arum and Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer have informed RingTV.com that there he has been ongoing conversations concerning several big fights.

Arum see the progression as a favorable sign that their once-frosty relationship has thawed since their twice-failed negotiations to make a bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

Mayweather has been handled by Golden Boy Promotions, and Pacquiao, by Top Rank.

Pacquiao had once jointly signed with both companies, creating a conflict. But the fighter has since amicably settled a lawsuit with Golden Boy Promotions, and now is being promoted fulltime by Top Rank.

“Up to this point, there had been a period where we wouldn’t make those fights because of the Manny Pacquiao situation,” said Arum. “But that’s now been resolved.”

The two companies already have put together recent bouts between featherweights Yuriorkis Gamboa and Daniel Ponce de Leon and WBC junior middleweight beltholder Saul Alvarez and Alfonso Gomez slated, respectively, for Sept. 10 and Sept. 17.

Gamboa and Gomez have been handled by Top Rank, and Alvarez and de Leon, by Golden Boy.

“Bob and me are having ongoing productive conversations about numerous fights,” said Schaefer. “I think it is a positive for the sport when the two largest promotional companies are working together.”

Each has expressed interest in long-range plans to match the 21-year-old Alvarez and 25-year-old WBC middleweight beltholder Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in an all-Mexican match up of unbeatens. Chavez Jr. is promoted by Top Rank.

In addition, Golden Boy junior middleweight Alfredo Angulo and Top Rank’s Vanes Martirosyan have been mandated to face each other by in a WBC eliminator.

In light of recent events, could a clash between Mayweather and Pacquiao be far off?

If not, then each must first get beyond their next bouts. Mayweather challenges WBC welterweight beltholder Victor Ortiz on Sept. 17, and Pacquiao has a WBO welterweight title defense against Juan Manuel Marquez on Nov. 12.

“We are having conversations about fights,” said Arum. “Obviously if they have fighters and we have fighters, and they have fighters to match up with our fighters, then we’re going to make those fights.”

WHERE WERE YOU DURING THE EARTHQUAKE?

On Tuesday, the most powerful earthquake in 67 years rocked the East Coast from South Carolina to Maine. Two boxers and a trainer told RingTV.com where they were when it all came down.

Calling it the “scare of my lifetime,” trainer George Peterson wound up hiding in a closet inside of a boxing gym in Millersville, Md.

“We were in there watching some film, and all of sudden the floor started moving, the ceiling lights started flickering, the walls started shaking and picture frames started falling off of the walls,” said Peterson, who works with three-time beltholder Paul Williams.

“Then I looked outside and I saw that the cars in the street were shimmying and shaking. So there was a closet inside, and I got in the closet for a minute. I was thinking, ‘Bin Laden must have been resurrected, and this must be a terrorist attack.'”

A roofer for a construction company, junior middleweight contender Pawel Wolak “was on a roof in the Bronx.”

“My wife was about 40 minutes away when she called me from her job in Parsippany, N.J., where she’s a nurse at a nursing home,” said Wolak, a Hackettstown, N.J., resident.

“She said that there was an earthquake that registered 5.8. I was like, ‘Really, because I didn’t feel anything.’ But she said that she was sitting down and she felt it.”

Wolak is slated to appear against an opponent to be determined on the under card of a rematch between WBA junior middleweight titleholder Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito on Dec. 3.

IBF beltholder Cornelius Bundrage is being highly considered as a rival for Wolak.

Junior welterweight contender Lamont Peterson “was in the house folding cloths and chillin.”

“And then, all of a sudden, man, everything started shifting and shaking and stuff, and then, a picture over the top of my bed fell,” said Peterson, whose two-year-old child, Sommer, was with him.

“So I just grabbed my daughter and made sure nothing fell on her. I thought, ‘this entire building must be about to collapse.'”

Peterson peered out of his window to see his brother, Anthony, an unbeaten lightweight fighter, pin-wheeling against the motion while struggling to stand on a sidewalk outside of his home.

“Anthony was outside with his legs spread out real wide, and his hands were out. He was trying to balance himself,” said Peterson. “I knew then, that it was an earthquake. But then, it just stopped.”

Peterson is the IBF’s No. 1 contender to face Amir Khan of England, also owner of the WBA belt.

Lem Satterfield can be reached at [email protected]