By Chris Williams: Joel Diaz, the trainer for WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s), believes that Bradley will be officially putting the 35-year-old Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) out of his misery this Satruday night in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Both Diaz and Bradley see Pacquiao one loss away from being put out to pasture, and they see this fight on Saturday as the tipping point that will send him skittering into a permanent retirement.
Pacquiao has already lost 2 out of his last 3 fights, so it’s not as if what they’d be doing to him would be anything really new. The end has been approaching for quite some time for the Filipino star.
“I think it’s Manny Pacquiao’s last fight,” Diaz said via USA Today. “Like everything in life, everything has a beginning and an end.”
This fight on Saturday night will very much determine the future for Pacquiao. If he loses badly to Bradley, then it’s obvious that Pacquiao will need to retire from the sport. If Pacquiao wins, then he move forward to a fifth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, and then continue on the rematch circuit with the likes of Bradley, Brandon Rios and Miguel Cotto.
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach said that he’d have a talk to Pacquiao about retirement if he loses to Bradley on Saturday, but then again with the money that can still be made by Pacquiao, Roach and Arum, it’s not believable that he’ll retire. A loss to Bradley should send Pacquiao into retirement, but with there being money still to be mined from the paying public, I see Pacquiao sticking around until the bitter end where he’s struggling to get even a 100,000 PPV buys.
If Pacquiao keeps losing that figure may not be too far off, because it’s already more than a little off putting to pay to see him fight for a lot of fans given his lack of success in the past two years. Paying to see someone fight with 2 losses in his last 3 fights is a little unsettling.
If Arum had at least put some work into the undercard for this Saturday’s fight it wouldn’t be so bad, but there’s some really disappointing fights on the undercard that I wouldn’t want to watch even for free. This is the undercard. You tell me if these are worth being on a PPV card:
Raymundo Beltran vs. Arash Usmanee
Bryan Vasquez vs. Jose Felix Jr
Khabib Allakhverdiev vs. Jessie Vargas
Sean Monaghan vs. Joe McCreedy
Oscar Valdez vs. Adrian Perez
Mark Anthony Geraldo vs. Raul Hidalgo
Esquiva Falcao vs. Pubilo Pena
Oleksandr Gvozdyk vs. Mike Montoya
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