By Chris Williams: With Manny Pacquiao announcing his retirement last Saturday night following his 12 round unanimous decision win over Tim Bradley in Las Vegas, we may have seen any chance of a rematch between Manny and Floyd Mayweather Jr. float outside the door.
Pacquiao says the chances of him fighting again are “50-50,” but you can imagine how hard it’s going to be for him to make a comeback when/if he takes over as a senator in the Philippines. That’s a hard job that requires a lot of daily meetings and tons of stress. Pacquiao is pretty well preserved for 37. Just watch how he ages from the stress of politics and having to attend tons of boring meetings with fellow politics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pacquiao has all silver hair within the next six years in office.
It’s a six-year commitment, and Pacquiao will likely take huge criticism from his political colleagues if he takes time off to go into an eight-week training camp for future fights while they’re working hard trying to help the people in the Philippines.
Pacquiao looked good enough last night in beating the 32-year-old Bradley to create a lot of potential interest if Mayweather came out of retirement and decided to throw the Filipino star a bone for a payday. You can imagine that a second fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather would do roughly half the amount of interest that the first Mayweather-Pacquiao fight brought in. So instead of the fight getting 4.6 million PPV buys on HBO/Showtime, it might bring in 2.3 million buys. That’s good money for both fighters compared to what each of them got for their last fights.
Mayweather fought Andre Berto in his last fight, and that was a contest that reportedly brought in a little over 200,000 buys on Showtime PPV. Pacquiao’s fight against Bradley last night will likely bring in around 200K buys, maybe a little less. I don’t think there was too much difference between Pacquiao-Bradley 3 and Mayweather-Berto. But if Mayweather and Pacquiao can do it again, it’s a fight that would give them both big paydays and give fans something to talk about.
“In regards to me coming back, I’m not there yet so I don’t know the feeling,” Pacquiao said last Saturday night at the post-fight press conference after his win over Bradley. “I have a commitment to my family. I made my decision already. If you ask me about my condition, my body is still okay. I can still give a good fight. I am still in good condition, and I work hard in training. I’m still okay.”
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach would like to see Pacquiao continue fighting so that he can face Terence Crawford, who also fights in the same Top Rank stable as Pacquiao. However, that’s a fight that Pacquiao doesn’t seem too interested in. If he was, he would have fought him this time. There’s also Amir Khan, Adrien Broner and WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum might block Pacquiao fighting Khan or Broner, and instead look to put him in with Crawford or Vargas. Those are Bradley level fights.
We’re probably talking about a couple hundred thousand PPV buys if Pacquiao fights Crawford or Vargas. Those guys are known to the hardcore boxing fans, but just ask a casual fan who those guys are and you’ll get a blank face. They don’t know Crawford or Vargas, and it’s unlikely that they ever will with the match-making that Arum has been doing for them.
“He was strong, man, fast and strong,” Bradley said after the fight about Pacquiao. “He was super smart tonight. He was always in the right spots. He was a step ahead of me. I was supposed to be a step ahead of him.”
Pacquiao didn’t have to be that smart to beat Bradley. With the game plan that Bradley had for the fight, which I could have done with a crayon and a piece of scratch paper, there was no way that Bradley was going to win the fight. Bradley hasn’t said yet whether he’s going to dump trainer Teddy Atlas, but you would have to have to believe it might be a good idea for Bradley to go in a different direction. He could have won the fight if he had a better game plan.
That’s what you hate to see; a good fighter being wasted on a poor game plan that should have been scrapped after the first two rounds. It’s too late for Bradley now. All he can do is try and learn from the experience and find a better trainer that can come up with good plans and back up plans when something isn’t working, which was the cast last Saturday for Bradley.
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