Pacquiao says he wants to end career with Mayweather fight

By Boxing News - 01/02/2016 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: As most boxing fans suspected, former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) will NOT be retiring after his April 9th fight against WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pacquiao, now having just turned 37, says he wants to end his career with a fight against his recent conqueror Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs). Pacquiao feels that a fight between the two of them is the best way for them to retire from the sport that they have been involved with for such a long time.

“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.”

Getting an audience with Mayweather to ask him for a fight will not be easy for Pacquiao. He cannot do it through his promoter Bob Arum, because I have a feeling that Arum will not make the phone call. I can picture Arum saying he does not know whom to call in order to start negotiations with Mayweather.

I think it’s going to take some serious groveling on Pacquiao’s part for him to get a second fight with Mayweather, because the shoulder excuse from Pacquiao has probably made a rematch unlikely. It is not just the shoulder excuse and the talk of miraculous salt water healing of the injury. Pacquiao also failed to admit that Mayweather beat him last time.

It looked bad the way Pacquiao would not give Mayweather his props for having whipped him honestly last May. Instead of Pacquiao slathering the compliments up and down Mayweather’s backside after the fight, Pacquiao said he thought he won the fight, and he did it with a shoulder injury.

I think Pacquiao and his adviser Michael Koncz are going to need to do the heavy lifting himself if he wants a rematch with Mayweather. If they leave it up to Arum, I doubt the fight will be made. The last thing we need to hear is Arum complaining about not knowing who to call to even start negotiations for a fight with Mayweather.

If Arum is going to meet with the cable and satellite distributers to discuss whether a Pacquiao-Mayweather is doable, then Pacquiao and Koncz need to sit on those conversations so that they can hear stuff from the source rather than second hand. It will not work if they are only hearing stuff from Arum without verifying the information themselves. What was it that former U.S president Ronald Reason once said, “Trust but verify.” I think that might be a good motto to follow for Pacquiao and Koncz in terms of Arum, the cable/satellite distributors and negotiations/phone calls with Mayweather.

Pacquiao had to do the heavy lifting himself the previous time he fought Mayweather, when he met him at a basketball game and spoke to him about a fight. It wasn’t Arum that met with Mayweather or phoned him; it was Pacquiao that did this and got the ball rolling for a mega-fight with Mayweather.

It might be a little more difficult to track Mayweather down now though, because he’s doing a lot of traveling nowadays. However, Pacquiao should still have his personal phone number. If not, then he needs to call Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe and speak to him about getting in contact with Mayweather for the rematch.

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“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.

The only reason the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight was not a great one last May was due to Pacquiao coming into the bout with an injured rotator cuff in his right shoulder.

If Pacquiao had simply had the fight postponed so that he could have the needed surgery to repair the problem, then there wouldn’t be any excuses for why the fight failed to live up to expectations of the fans. If Pacquiao had come into a fight completely healthy the way he should have, then he would not have any reason to fight Mayweather a second time. Either he would have won or he would have lost and had no excuses to use.



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