Per Top Rank, Pacquiao-Broner rumors are nonsense, says Rafael

By Boxing News - 12/22/2015 - Comments

1-LR_MAYPAC-TRAPPFOTOS-FINAL PRESSER-9963By Dan Ambrose: Earlier today, WBA light welterweight champion Adrien Broner revealed that he had been contacted by Manny Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz about him being interested in having Broner face Pacquiao. According to Dan Rafael, he’s saying that someone in the Top Rank promotional organization has dismissed the Broner-Pacquiao rumors as little more than nonsense. There will be no Pacquiao vs. Broner fight, in other words.

It’s hard to know what’s true though when it comes to Pacquiao and his next fight. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank recently was saying that Pacquiao would name his next opponent for his April 9th fight during Arum’s December 11th fight card on truTV from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was thought that Pacquiao would select one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Terence Crawford or Tim Bradley.

Crawford was going to attend the card as a fan, and it was thought that Pacquiao was supposed to make the announcement to name either Crawford or Bradley as his next opponent. Bradley was working the fight as a broadcaster for Top Rank. However, when Pacquiao failed to make his announcement during the fight, we were told by Top Rank that he still had not made the decision.

Since then, there has been talk that Pacquiao isn’t excited about fighting one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters, and he preferred someone else. It was then that Broner’s name was rumored as a fighter that Pacquiao could be interested in facing. The fact that Broner is now saying that he was contacted by Pacquiao’s adviser Koncz suggests that maybe Top Rank doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes with Pacquiao.

Pacquiao needs to do what’s right for him. If he can make more money fighting Broner than Arum’s fighters Tim Bradley or Terence Crawford, then Pacquiao should elect to go for the money. After all, it’s his career and he’ll be the one losing money if he fights Crawford or Bradley. If Arum is going to make up the difference in lost PPV buys for Pacquiao to fight Bradley or Crawford instead of an arguably more popular guy like Broner, then he should think about doing it. If not, then a fight against Broner would seem like the smarter move for Pacquiao.

Top Rank didn’t make the first move to have Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight. It was done by Pacquiao, who ran into Mayweather at a basketball game. The two fighters then had a discussion and decided to face each other. That was Pacquiao who made that move.

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If Pacquiao is having his adviser Koncz speak with Broner on his own, then it would make sense that Top Rank is in the dark about it and would say it’s nonsense. If they don’t know what’s happening, then of course they can’t say it’s true because they’re in the dark.

It’s obviously in Arum and his promotional team Top Rank’s best interest in Pacquiao fights a Top Rank fighter for his final fight of his career on April 9th. There would be no sharing of the promotion if Pacquiao fights one of Arum’s stable fighters in his Top Rank team, and all the money stays with Top Rank rather than being shared with a non-Top Rank fighter that is promoted by another promotional team.

You can also make an argument that it’s in Top Rank and Arum’s best interest if Pacquiao elects to fight Terence Crawford, because he needs the fight more than Bradley in order to increase his popularity. If Crawford is ever going to become a pay-per-view attraction for Top Rank, then he’s going to need Pacquiao’s Midas touch by facing him and beating the 37-year-old Filipino in order to win a ton of new fans from that fight.

Pacquiao would be the stepping stone for Crawford to trod on for him to potentially take the baton from Pacquiao to become Top Rank’s next and only PPV attraction. If Pacquiao refuses to give Crawford that fight in the passing of the baton type fight, then it leaves Top Rank in a bad position where they may never be able to turn Crawford into a star.

They would have to do something dramatic like matching Crawford against a non-Top Rank fighter like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, and that’s a fight that would probably not go too well for the rail thin Crawford. Top Rank doesn’t have the in house talent to make Crawford a big unfortunately. Miguel Cotto is no longer with Top Rank, and I doubt that he would want to burn up one of his remaining fights facing a guy who doesn’t have a large fan base like Crawford.

That’s why it’s kind of up to Pacquiao to become the old lion for Crawford to rip to pieces to make him look good enough to convince casual boxing fans to want to pay money to see him fight. Personally, I think it’s a fail even if Pacquiao does choose to fight Crawford.

I don’t see Crawford ever becoming a PPV star. If an arguably more exciting fighter like Gennady Golovkin is struggling to become a PPV star, then I can’t see Crawford making that leap just because he beats Pacquiao at the end of his career. Crawford needs way more than Pacquiao to turn him into a PPV attraction. Crawford needs to change his fighting style to become more exciting, he needs a lot more punching power, he needs better hand speed, and he needs to beat the top 140, 147, 154 and 160lb fighters. I don’t see that happening because of the narrow match-making. If all Crawford is going to be matched against are a lot of fighters from Arum’s Top Rank stable, then we probably won’t see Crawford fight guys like Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, Amir Khan, Jermall Charlo, Jermell Charlo, Demetrius Andrade, Canelo Alvarez and Golovkin. He’s friends with Bradley, so he won’t fight him.

Like I said, I get the feeling that Top Rank really, really wants Pacquiao to fight one of their guys for his final fight. If Pacquiao’s adviser Koncz is working behind the scenes to make a deal with Broner, then I’m curious whether this is something that would please Top Rank, because Broner is not one of Arum’s fighters. I think they need Pacquiao to take the fight with Crawford, and it’s going to be interesting if he chooses not to.



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