By Chris Williams: 48-year-old Bernard Hopkins doesn’t see a Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. being competitive now if the fight were to be made, not that it ever will be made. Hopkins thinks too much was taken out of the Filipino in his recent 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last month, and he feels that Manny only has one fight left in him and that’s the rematch with Marquez.
Speaking with ESPN, Hopkins said “That type of knockout; that was 10 fights for Pacquiao. The way Pacquiao got hit, he jumped into the punch. He was knocked out before he hit the canvas. It takes a lot out of a fighter when you get that way. I’ll be surprised if he fights more than one time. The way he got knocked out, it’s hard to recover, spiritually, emotionally. Who cares now? [Pacquiao vs. Mayweather bout]. It would be easy pickings for Floyd Mayweather. Now if they fought, Floyd Mayweather would make it even easier than I predicted the first time.”
I agree with Hopkins. I think it wouldn’t even fight if Mayweather were to fight Pacquiao now. The way Pacquiao got knocked out, and the way he got dropped in the 3rd round by Marquez, I think Mayweather would be dropping Pacquiao left and right if they were to fight now. Obviously, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum probably wouldn’t be interested in a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight at this juncture being that the purse split would be so far in Mayweather’s favor that it wouldn’t even be worth it to take the fight.
Besides that, another loss for Pacquiao could make it hard for Arum to continue to try and sell his fights on pay per view. Who wants to pay to see someone fight who has lost their last four fights? I think that’s what we’d be talking about by the time a Mayweather-Pacquiao could actually happen seeing that Pacquiao will probably lose to Marquez again in September by another knockout.
At that point, Pacquiao will have lost his last three fights and his bargaining power would be almost zero in trying to negotiate a fight with Mayweather. Then if Mayweather beats Pacquiao as well, we’re four straight losses. That’s like Evander Holyfield with his sagging career. I don’t think the boxing public will want to continue to pay to see Pacquiao’s fights in as large a numbers at that point. Who wants to pay big money to see someone with a losing streak like that? If Arum were willing to drop the asking price for a Pacquiao fight from $60 to $2.99, then maybe it might be interesting to watch him fight just for the sake to see if he’d get knocked out again, but other than that I don’t see Pacquiao remaining a PPV attraction.
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