Pacquiao says he has 4 fighters he’s looking at for final fight

By Boxing News - 11/06/2015 - Comments

1-Pacquiao_Mayweather_150429_008aBy Allan Fox: While Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is mentioning only three potential candidates for Manny Pacquiao’s final fight of his career in April of next year, Pacquiao is saying that he’s looking at four different guys.

Pacquiao says that Tim Bradley, Amir Khan, Danny Garcia and Terence Crawford are among his four potential opponents. For his part, Arum’s list only includes Crawford, Khan and Bradley. Supposedly, Pacquiao is the one that makes the decisions when it comes to who he fights.

If that’s the case, then he needs to sit down with Arum and tell him to include Garcia’s name with the list. Pacquiao says it’s very important that he wins his last fight of his career. He doesn’t say why, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that a loss for him at this time might hurt his chances of winning a seat in the senate in the Philippines.

“It’s part of our plan, we have Amir Khan, Danny Garcia, Terrence Crawford or Timothy Bradley. But I don’t know yet, a lot of names have been given to me by my promoter Bob Arum. Not yet. We are yet to finalize anything,” Pacquiao said via emirates247.com.

Pacquiao’s best chance of finishing his career with a victory is against Bradley. He already beat him by a one-sided 12 round decision in 2014. Khan, Garcia and Crawford would be more difficult due to their specific skillset. Garcia has huge punching power in his left hook, and he could potentially KO Pacquiao if he lands something flush.

Crawford has huge power in his left hook, and he’s excellent at changing stances to fight southpaw for long stretches at a time. But most of all, Crawford is a counter puncher and he could give Pacquiao problems with his ability to nail him each time he lands something.

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Pacquiao struggled in his four fights with the counter punching Juan Manuel Marquez over the years, and he looked bad against Floyd Mayweather Jr., who countered Pacquiao all night last May in beating him by a 12 round decision.

Fighting Khan would be bad because he runs, holds and sometimes pushes off a lot. Khan would be looking to use the same blueprint that Mayweather used to beat Pacquiao by using his jab and moving all the time. Khan is even more mobile than Mayweather, and it might be very difficult for Pacquiao to beat him.

It’ll definitely be frustrating for Pacquiao to fight Khan, because he likes his opponents to come straight at him. Khan wouldn’t do that. The only way Pacquiao because Khan is if he walks him down the way that Marcos Maidana and Chris Algieri did.

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“It’s very important to finish my career with victory. That’s important to me,” said Pacquiao.

If it’s really important that Pacquiao finish his career with a win, then he absolutely must fight Bradley rather than Crawford, Garcia or Khan. Pacquiao needs to go the Mayweather route for his last fight by fighting someone he knows he can beat. Look at who Mayweather fight in his last fight. He took on Andre Berto, a fighter who looked totally shot and wasn’t even competitive with him.



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