UNLESS Bob Arum pulls off a Houdini act, Manny Pacquiao having Timothy Bradley for his next opponent is already cast in stone.

After Floyd Mayweather Jr. announced he’s fighting Miguel Cotto on May 5, and with Juan Manuel  Marquez seemed headed to a showdown with  Lamont Peterson, the boxing superstar from the Philippines  appeared to have made his  choice in  Bradley, the reigning World Boxing Organization (WBO) light-welterweight champion.

Top Rank president Todd DuBoef disclosed the boxing promotion is  undergoing talks with representatives of both sides on a possible title match on June 9.

“We’re in the process of having the conversations with (Bradley’s manager) Cameron (Dunkin) and we’re also having them with the Pacquiao team. It’s a very active dialogue,” DuBoef said in an interview with ESPN.

Bradley, Marquez, Peterson, and Cotto were in the short list presented by Bob Arum, the Top Rank chairman, when he came to the country last month to discuss the possible foe the 33-year-old Pacquiao will be facing in his first fight for the year 2012.

Arum said a choice had already been made by the Filipino ring icon before he left for the U.S., but won’t make the announcement until next week.

For a while, Mayweather Jr. was included in the discussion following his famous shout-out in Twitter about the two of them making the fight the world wants to see happen on May 5.

Unfortunately, both camps failed to come to terms on the fight date, and later on, the split of the purse, forcing each other to left the bargaining table again and look for other available options.

On Wednesday, the jail-bound Mayweather Jr., 34, let the world know who he’s going to face next.

“He’s the best at 154,” said Mayweather of Cotto, the Puerto Rican boxing idol, who’s the reigning World Boxing Association (WBA) light-middleweight champion.

Floyd Jr. made the announcement of his title meeting with Cotto shortly after being granted a boxing license for the bout set three months from now in Las Vegas.

The bout comes at least three weeks before Mayweather Jr. begins serving the 90-day jail term handed out to him by a Las Vegas court for misdemeanor and domestic violence charges.

The undefeated American also used the opportunity to once again criticized Pacquiao, whom he referred to as ‘Miss PacMan’ in an earlier twit, for ducking and refusing to face him in the ring.

“I presented Pacquiao with the fight,” Mayweather said after meeting with the Nevada commission. “Pacquiao is blowing a lot of smoke. … He doesn’t really want to fight. I gave him a chance to step up to the plate. We’re talking about a $10 million fighter that I tried to give $40 million to. We didn’t even talk about the back end.”

And there’s more.

“He’s ducking and dodging me,” Mayweather said of Pacquiao. “He really didn’t want to fight from the beginning. He got famous basically by piggybacking off my name. When you mention Floyd Mayweather, man, you mention an all-time great, an icon in the sport of boxing.

“When you mention Manny Pacquiao, they say, `Oh, that’s the guy who’s trying to fight Floyd Mayweather.’ When it’s all said and done, all the guy did is just piggyback off my name.”

Pacquiao adviser Michael Konz denied the Filipino boxing champion turned Sarangani congressman shunned a fight with Mayweather, detailing how they even offered the Mayweather camp a guaranteed $50 million prize purse and a 55-45 split in the revenue, the larger portion of which goes to the winner.

In the wake of a Mayweather-Cotto deal, Konz said they will now try to get the best available opportunity there is for Pacquiao, with Bradley, unbeaten with a 28-0 record but only 12 KOs, on top of their list.

“I’m going to meet with Bob (Arum) to discuss not only Bradley, but also Marquez and Peterson because now I have to determine what is the best for Manny style-wise,” Koncz said in a separate talk with ESPN.

“The majority of our discussions have been about Bradley. We have not committed to Bradley from our side, but now I need to explore the other options because of what happened with Mayweather announcing that he’s fighting Cotto,” he added.

Cotto, whom Pacquiao demolished with a 12-round technical knockout win in 2009, said he’s ready to take on Mayweather.