Arum hoping for Pacquiao vs. Crawford in November 2016

By Boxing News - 12/30/2015 - Comments

crawford67884By Chris Williams: If Manny Pacquiao doesn’t retire after his next fight on April 9th against Tim Bradley, his promoter Bob Arum would like to have Pacquiao fight in November of 2016 with WBO light welterweight Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) as a possible opponent.

Arum was hoping that Pacquiao would choose the 28-year-old Crawford for his April fight, but instead he went with the tried and true Bradley. It would have been a passing of the torch if Pacquiao had fought Crawford and lost the fight.

I think Arum and Top Rank need that passing of the torch in order to turn Crawford into a PPV star the way that Oscar De La Hoya did a passing of the torch to Pacquiao in 2008, when he was pounded into submission by the younger Filipino fighter. If Crawford can use Pacquiao stepping stone to get a boost, it would definitely help his career.

Pacquiao could potentially retire in May if he gets elected into the senate in the Philippines. However, Arum isn’t ready to count Pacquiao as being done with boxing, and neither is his trainer Freddie Roach. Both seem to think the 37-year-old Pacquiao will continue his career after his April fight with the 32-year-old Bradley. Roach even believes that Pacquiao will still fight when/if he becomes the president of the Philippines. That’s just crazy to even think about.

“Arum mentioned ‘November’ as a possible next Pacquiao date, with Crawford a candidate, while Pac would obviously pursue Floyd Mayweather,” Lance Pugmire said on his Twitter.

I think Pacquiao will ignore Crawford if he continues to fight beyond the April date, and instead look to get a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. Why would Pacquiao waste his time fighting someone like Crawford when he can make tons of cash fighting Mayweather again? If were Pacquiao, I wouldn’t waste time fighting a guy without a huge fan base like Crawford. That would arguably be worse than Pacquiao all of a sudden saying he wants to get Brandon Rios to come out of retirement in order to fight him.

I think Rios has a bigger fan base than Crawford once you remove Crawford’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska out of the equation. Top Rank has got an uphill climb in trying to turn Crawford into a star, because he’s so much of an unknown at this point with the casual boxing fans of the sport. But it’s not worthwhile for Pacquiao to fight Crawford unless Arum wants to subsidize the fight by paying extra for the likely lost PPV buys that Pacquiao would lose in fighting Crawford instead of a more popular fighter like Adrien Broner, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Danny Garcia or Keith Thurman. Sadly, I don’t think Arum would ever let any of those fights happen because those guys aren’t Top Rank fighters, but you would have to believe that Pacquiao could make a lot more money fighting those guys than he could in doing Arum a favor and fighting Crawford.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWH4-bjrcxc

If Pacquiao is going to continue to fight into next November, then he needs to be facing more popular fighters than guys like Bradley and Crawford. It’s disappointing to see all the rematches that Arum has stuck Pacquiao with in his years as his promoter. We’ve seen Pacquiao fight Juan Manuel Marquez four times, Marco Antonio Barrera two times, Erik Morales three times, and now Bradley three times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtqNYunrU80



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