The lingering hopes of seeing Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather seem to have been dashed with the former extending his contract with Top Rank.

Recently, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum announced that Top Rank had entered into an agreement with Manny Pacquiao and MP Productions, extending their promotional contracts till Dec. 31, 2016.

After signing the agreement, Arum told the media, "We are pleased that together with our partners at HBO we will continue presenting to the public fights of the great Manny Pacquiao through the end of 2016."

Many had hoped that Pacquiao would quit Top Rank after the expiry of his current contract, thereby freeing him up to meet Mayweather in his next fight. However, Mayweather and Arum essentially remains in a preposterous situation.

Despite the fact that neither Pacquiao, nor Mayweather have any clear-cut opponents, the possibilities of them featuring in a fight is almost nil at this moment. In fact, Arum is the main stumbling block a potential fight featuring the two boxers, according to some rumors.

Arum recently said that he had no doubts that Pacquiao would sign the contract.

"These guys are like family to me," Arum said. "We had discussed this for a while and I was always sure it would get done. Now that it's been signed and is formally signed, it puts a wrap on it and it feels good to know we'll be together for another two years."

As of now, Pacquiao is likely to fight Manuel Marquez sometime in November. The two have already faced each other in four exhausting previous fights. In case, Marques does not agree to fight Paccquiao, Arum will be trying to set up a Pacquiao vs. Ruslan Provodnikov, who is also known as "The Siberian Rocky," fight.

Arum says, "I'm not going to worry about something I can't bring to bear."

"We want to fight him and we're willing to discuss it at any point. There are two ways to go here. One is to do a Mayweather fight with both HBO and Showtime involved, as they did with Lewis-Tyson, as I understand Mayweather is under contract to Showtime through 2015. The companies could come together and put on the show."

"Or, the other alternative is, if Floyd wanted to fight Manny in 2016, he could return to HBO and we could do it there," he adds.