Did Mayweather’s lack of interest cause Pacquiao to choose retirement?

By Boxing News - 01/04/2016 - Comments

floyd56By Chris Williams: Fans have just now learned that Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) plans on retiring after his fight against Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) in three months from now in their fight on 4/9, and people want to know what made the Filipino star change his mind about not wanting to continue his career.

I have a hunch. Perhaps Pacquiao was hoping that Floyd Mayweather Jr. was going to give him a sign that he was interested in fighting him. When Mayweather stayed silent, Pacquiao may have realized that it wasn’t going to happen, so he figures it’s better to retire instead.

Here’s what Pacquiao said two days ago about Mayweather:

“I have been very vocal about it (fighting Mayweather) even before the Bradley fight was made official on New Year’s Eve,” Pacquiao said to philboxing.com. “The reason is simple; I want to end my 21-year boxing career with a big bang. What would be the biggest fight to end a career than fighting the best and finest boxer at least in this era?” Pacquiao said. “We could have given that last May when we faced each other but due to unavoidable circumstances, sports fans failed to get the results they wanted,” said Pacquiao.

Now you tell me what made Pacquiao change his mind about not wanting to fight again after the Bradley fight? If it wasn’t a case of Pacquiao losing interest in continuing his career because of the realization that there would be no second fight against Mayweather, then maybe he sees what the future would look like if he did continue to fight. I’m talking about Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum sitting down and talking to him about wanting/needing him to fight his young unbeaten Top Rank stable fighter Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs), who needs Pacquiao’s pelt to add to his collection in order to become a PPV star.

Right now, Crawford’s future is uncertain. He may never become a pay-per-view attraction for Arum, especially with him treading water facing lesser fighters like Dierry Jean and Thomas Dulorme. Crawford needs Pacquiao’s scalp, and he needs an impressive win over him. If Arum were to feed to Pacquiao to Crawford later on this year, it could be the difference between Crawford being another Bradley type of fighter or being a Miguel Cotto type of PPV attraction.

It’s doubtful that Crawford will ever be a mega-PPV type of attraction, but he could make the leap to a lower level PPV guy similar to Cotto if he could take Pacquiao’s scalp off of him later this year. If Pacquiao doesn’t retire off of his fight with Bradley, I’d be willing to bet that there would some major pressure coming from Arum for Pacquiao to take the fight with Crawford so that he could be that stepping stone for Crawford to step on as he gets to the next level of his career. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see it. I believe that Pacquiao would be under the gun to take the Crawford fight, and it wouldn’t be pretty if he said no again.

Here’s the deal; if Pacquiao fights Mayweather in a rematch this year, he’ll probably get over $100 million in a fight that he’ll likely lose once again. It’ll obviously hurt Pacquiao’s pride to lose to Mayweather a second time. There wouldn’t be a shoulder injury for Pacquiao to talk about, I guess. But the money that Pacquiao would make would obviously prove to be a good salve to help sooth his wounded ego. $100 milion goes a long ways to healing wounded pride, I imagine. Never the less, if Pacquiao were to fight Crawford, the money would be much less. Pacquiao would get his usual $20 million guarantee like he’s getting for the rematch against Crawford, but the pay-per-view upside probably wouldn’t be that much.

My guess is a Pacquiao-Crawford fight brings in maybe 400,000 pay-per-view buys at beat. Crawford is known by the hardcore boxing fans and his fans in Omaha, Nebraska, but not by the casual fans of the sport. So, Pacquiao would be lucky if a fight like that brought in 400K. I think it would similar to the PPV buys that Pacquiao’s fights against Brandon Rios and Chris Algieri brought in. In other words, 400K, possibly even less than that. With there being a high chance that Pacquiao would lose to Crawford, he would be making little money for a defeat that could hurt his political career in the Philippines. Pacquiao is running for a seat in the senate in May, and he’s likely going to win it. If Pacquiao loses to Crawford later this year, does this hurt Pacquiao’s ability to stay in office? I don’t know. Losing obviously wouldn’t be a positive for a fighter whose popularity is based largely on his success with his boxing career.



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