Will Pacquiao select who he fights next?

By Boxing News - 09/29/2015 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says he’s not only talking to Amir Khan, but other candidates as well for Manny Pacquiao’s next fight in 2016.

Arum says that Khan is the front runner for the fight, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be the one who gets selected as the one who faces Pacquiao. Arum says he’s going to present the names to Pacquiao when he meets with him, and presumably Pacquiao be the one who picks out his next opponent.

A lot of boxing fans believe that Pacquiao rubber stamps whichever opponent that Arum wants him to fight. It’s hard to know for sure. What we do know is Pacquiao fights a lot of Top Rank fighters of Arum, and that’s what gives fans the impression that Arum is the one that makes the selection for Pacquiao’s fights rather than him.

“After I talk to them [the candidates], I will present everything to Manny,” said Arum to mb.com.ph.

Besides Amir Khan, Arum is interested in matching Pacquiao against his own fighter Terence Crawford, as well as some non-Top Rank fighters in Kell Brook, Lucas Matthysse and Juan Manuel Marquez. It’s unclear how much serious interest there is in Arum putting Pacquiao in with Brook or Matthysse.

We do know that he would love to match Pacquiao against Marquez for a fifth fight, but Marquez recently told ESPN Deportes that he has no interest in fighting Pacquiao yet again. He feels that four times is enough, and besides that, he has a knee problem that has persisted for over a year and half.

It would look real bad if Marquez came limping into the ring to fight Pacquiao in a pay-per-view bout on HBO. The boxing fans might not like the idea of seeing Pacquiao involved in another fight where injury plays a part. In Pacquiao’s last fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Pacquiao has a shoulder problem before the fight, and the problem got worse as the fight went on. It wasn’t a great fight, and a lot of boxing fans blame Pacquiao because he took the fight with an injury.

Pacquiao’s next fight could take place in April rather than February, according to mb.com.ph.
“I have no timetable until I speak to his doctor,” Arum said about when he feels Pacquiao will return to the ring.

It might be risky to have Pacquiao fight in February against someone like Khan, Crawford, Matthysse or Brook. If Arum is interested in having Pacquiao fight that soon, then he needs to have him fight one of his slow Top Rank fighters like Rios. I doubt that the fans would be interested in seeing that mismatch again, but it would be safer for Pacquiao to face a lesser fighter right now.

I don’t think Pacquiao will be fighting Khan, Matthysse, or Brook. I think it’s going to be Crawford all the way. That fight is definitely going to happen in 2016 in my view. I don’t see Pacquiao ending his contract with Top Rank, which ends in December 2016, without Arum having him fight Crawford. It’s obviously not a fight that would bring in as much money as Pacquiao’s other potential bigger money fights against the likes of Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, or Mayweather, but I think Arum needs Pacquiao to fight Crawford in order to turn the Nebraska native into a star for his Top Rank stable.

Without a fight against Pacquiao, Crawford may wind up never building a large fan base outside of his home state of Nebraska. So in that sense, Pacquiao will be a stepping stone for Crawford. I wouldn’t say yes to a fight against Crawford if I were Pacquiao, because he can make a lot more money fighting other guys like Cotto, Canelo, Gennady Golovkin, Amir Khan or Mayweather. But I’m not sure that Pacquiao actually makes the decisions in which guys he fights. If you see Pacquiao fighting Crawford in 2016, then that tells me it was Arum who made that choice for him rather than Pacquiao.

If Pacquiao faces Crawford, he’ll likely lose to him, and that in turn will probably lead to Pacquiao extending his contract with Top Rank so that he doesn’t end his career on a loss. I don’t think Pacquiao is going to want to end his career with an embarrassing defeat to one of Arum’s stable fighters.



Comments are closed.