By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says that Manny Pacquiao will sit down and watch video of Tim Bradley’s fight against Brandon Rios, as well as recent fights from Amir Khan and Terence Crawford to make a selection of which fighter he would like to face next in what could be the final fight of Pacquiao’s career on April 9th.
Arum isn’t saying who he personally wants Pacquiao’s to fight next, but some boxing fans think that Arum wants/needs Pacquiao tight Crawford in order to increase his value to his Top Rank stable in the same way that Rios’ value was increased after his fight against Pacquiao two years ago.
Right now, Crawford is arguably the least popular fighter of the three choices for Pacquiao, and he would likely bring in far less money for Pacquiao on HBO PPV than Khan or Bradley, but if Pacquiao doesn’t need the money or if Arum is willing to subsidize his selection of Crawford, then it might be worth it for Pacquiao to fight him rather than the arguably more popular Khan or Bradley.
“Manny Pacquiao will review the tape of this fight, the tape of Terence Crawford’s fight and Amir Khan and he’ll make a decision,” Arum said via ringtv.com.
Pacquiao is going to need to make a decision soon if they want to start marketing the fight to make it a success on HBO PPV. If Arum wants Pacquiao to fight Crawford next, then it will be in his best interest to have that fight announced to the boxing public as soon as possible because it’s a fight that will need a lot of build up to try and attract fans to pay to see it.
Personally, I don’t see Pacquiao-Crawford or Pacquiao-Bradley III as PPV worthy fights. Pacquiao already fought Bradley twice previously, and I don’t see there being much interest in a third fight, even though Bradley looked good in beating an unmotivated and out of shape 29-year-old Rios last night.
As bad as Rios looked last night, I think he would have lost to Mike Alvarado in a fourth fight. Rios looked really bad last night, and I think he would have lost to a lot of other fighters in the welterweight or even light welterweight division.
Crawford isn’t well-known enough to attract interest in a Pacquiao vs. Crawford fight. That fight would be like Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri 2.0, except that I don’t think it would even do as well as that fight, because Algieri was able to attract some interest in the fight due to him being articulate.
“Isn’t Crawford fighting Pacquiao?” Bradley said. “I just want to relax and let my wife figure out what’s next.”
If Pacquiao chooses Bradley again, then he’s asking for low PPV numbers, because it’s just not a fight that boxing fans are excited about right now. It’s like going to a bad restaurant again expecting to get better food than last two times you were there. If it wasn’t good the last time you went, then you can pretty much assume that the food will be bad the third time.
I was personally bored by both of the first two Pacquiao-Bradley fights, and I can’t imagine them fighting a third time. Doesn’t Arum have any better ideas than this? It’s like he knows one song and he’s going to sing it to the fans until they cover their ears in pain.
“I don’t know because Teddy hasn’t even looked at the tape yet,” Bradley said about whether his trainer Teddy Atlas could fix the mistakes in his game that led to him looking poor in his first two fights with Pacquiao. “But I’m sure he would come up with the perfect game plan.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWH4-bjrcxc
I think we saw the game plan of what Bradley would do against Pacquiao last night with all the movement and holding that Bradley used against Rios. Bradley will probably now focus on trying to throw body punches against Pacquiao, thinking that if it worked against Rios, then it’ll work against Pacquiao. I don’t think body shots would work against Pacquiao. I do think that if Bradley tries to throw a lot of body shots in a fight against Pacquiao, he’ll wind up getting clobbered and maybe even knocked out.
Comments are closed.