Pacquiao: “My April 9 fight against Timothy Bradley will be my last”

By Boxing News - 01/04/2016 - Comments

Manny Pacquiao with mediaBy Chris Williams: Days after saying that he was going to continue fighting until he gets a rematch with Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr, Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 32 KOs) has revealed that he’ll be retiring after his fight against Tim Bradley 33-1-1, 13 KOs) on April 9th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pacquiao says he wants to focus on his political career in the Philippines. The 37-year-old Pacquiao hasn’t been elected into the senate in the Philippines as of yet, but he appears to be acting as if it’s going to happen with the way he’s talking.

“My April 9 fight against Timothy Bradley will be my last. I’m retiring from boxing to focus on my new job,” Pacquiao said to philboxing.com.

It’s understandable why Pacquiao would want to retire after the Bradley fight. There’s not a lot of options for him in terms of fights if he continues to continue his career. If he doesn’t retire, he’s likely going to be pressured into fighting fellow Top Rank fighter Terence Crawford, and that’s a fight that is a lot of risk without a ton of money. If Pacquiao is going to be limited to only fighting Top Rank guys, then his future is surrounded by fights against Crawford and more fights against Bradley.

Unfortunately, it’s a constant recycling of opponents for Pacquiao with him fighting the same Top Rank guys over and over again. We saw how Pacquiao fought Juan Manuel Marquez 4 times, Erik Morales 3 times, Marco Antonio Barrera 2 times, and now Bradley 3 times. If Pacquiao were to continue to fight, I think there would be 2 to 3 fights against Crawford, and another 2 fights against Bradley, and maybe even another against Marquez.

Someone needs to break the Pacquiao retirement news to his 84-year-old promoter Bob Arum gently, because I think the Top Rank boss may take this kind of hard. Pacquiao has been Arum’s No.1 money fighter for a long, long time, and he’s brought him and his promotional company a great deal of money over the years.

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With Pacquiao retiring, Arum won’t have anyone that will be able to step into his shoes right away to bring in the cash that he was constantly bringing to Arum and his company year after year. Arum has guys like light welterweight Terence Crawford and lightweight Felix Verdejo as future potential pay-per-view attractions, but neither of them are ready to become PPV stars right now.

It would have helped Arum in a HUGE way if Pacquiao had elected to be a stepping stone for Crawford to become a star by throwing him a bone by giving him a fight so that Crawford could potentially whip him the same way that Pacquiao whipped and over-the-hill and old Oscar De La Hoya in 2008 to become a PPV star. I expect Arum to try and talk Pacquiao out of retiring, or at least not giving up on the idea of him coming back in the near future in the second half of 2016.

If Floyd Mayweather Jr. chooses to make a comeback, I can see Pacquiao coming out of retirement to take that fight if Mayweather is interested in fighting him. There’s too much money available to Pacquiao for him not to take that fight. Additionally, I’m sure the millions would help Pacquiao in his political career.

Pacquiao ending his career with a fight against Bradley has got to be a real disappointment to a lot boxing fans, because it’s not a great fight or even close to that. It’s little more than a fight that has been done one times too many. There’s no real drama involved because Pacquiao has already gotten the Better of Bradley twice before.

The only thing that’s interesting about the third fight between Pacquiao and Bradley is if Teddy Alas, the new trainer for Bradley, can improve him enough to beat Pacquiao. Since Bradley has already used various strategies against Pacquiao in the past in their two fights, I doubt that Atlas is going to be able to discover any new strategies for Bradley to use in the third fight. Anything that Atlas can possibly come up with has already been played out in the past by Bradley in his first two fights.

It’ll be interesting to hear Atlas talk about the clever ideas he’ll have in the run up to the fight, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to think of anything at all that will be different from what we’ve seen from Bradley in the past. About the only thing that Atlas can come up that will be new from what Bradley’s previous trainer Joel Diaz was doing is using different motivational speeches in the corner. Atlas will likely come up with something interesting and dramatic sounding.



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