By Chris Williams: For fans of former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao, he’ll soon be coming back this year on October 29 or November, according to news from Dan Rafael. Pacquiao’s next fight will be televised on HBO pay-per-view.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Ran has a couple of his stable fighters Jessie Vargas and Terence Crawford that are the leading candidates for the 37-year-old Filipino star to pick from. There’s also a chance of Pacquiao fighting WBC welterweight champion Danny “Swift” Garcia if Arum can work with his adviser Al Haymon.
Frankly, I’d be very surprised if Pacquiao fights Garcia. The pattern we’ve seen in Pacquiao’s past fights over the last seven years is him fighting Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters one after another. That’s why you have to figure that Pacquiao will fight Crawford of Vargas. Neither of them are fights that will bring in a lot of PPV buys like Pacquiao had become accustomed to getting in the past when he bringing in routinely over 1 million buys per fight.
Former four-time world champion Adrien “The Problem” Broner is said to have been ruled out for Pacquiao’s next fight due to him asking for too much money. It probably wouldn’t have been a fight that would bring in big PPV numbers, because Broner’s career hasn’t looked the same since he suffered losses to Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter.
Pacquiao last fought in April of this year in an ill-advised third fight with Tim Bradley. It wasn’t the smartest move that Pacquiao could have made, but with Bradley one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters, it wasn’t surprising that the two of them met again.
Hopefully, Arum doesn’t trot Bradley out for a fourth time, because it’s already forlorn seeing the same fights over and over again. Pacquiao needs new blood, preferably someone that is actually good and not a paper champion. Danny Garcia and Jessie Vargas would be poor choices, because neither of them is seen as the best at 147 or even the second best. We’re talking maybe five or sixth best in the division. Someone like Errol Spence Jr. would likely beat them both quite easily.
Pacquiao went into retirement after his last win over Bradley in their needless rematch last April. Pacquiao was elected into the senate last May in a six-year hitch, and he’s now learning the ropes for his senatorial gig. But it looks like the job will let Pacquiao continue his boxing career in at least the short term. It’s unknown if Pacquiao will continue fighting beyond his next fight. My guess is if Pacquiao wins the fight and looks great, he’ll continue his career. If he loses, then I think he’ll retire for good unless Arum can talk him into returning for yet another fight.
It’s not all that surprising that Pacquiao is coming out of retirement because the Bradley fight was a terrible way to retire. The fight wasn’t in demand by the boxing public because Pacquiao had already beaten Bradley in 2014 in a one-sided fight, and arguably beat him in their first fight in 2012. It was crazy for them to fight a third time. Arum should have someone else for Pacquiao to fight instead of Bradley. That was a bad idea to even include him in the list of options, if that was Arum’s decision.
The question is can Pacquiao get the time to do his training for his next fight? If he’s only going to be able to devote three to four weeks to training camp due to his senatorial duties, then he’s going to be at a huge disadvantage if he’s put in with someone good, which it doesn’t look like he will. Crawford is a good 140lb fighter, but he’s kind of frail looking, not that fast, and he holds too much. I think it would be bad choice if Pacquiao selects him in order to make the 84-year-old Arum happy.
In a presumptuous move, Arum previously booked the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas for October 15, in case Pacquiao came back at that time. Pacquiao won’t be able to fight on that date, however, because his senatorial job keeping him busy around that time.
“We’re looking at Oct. 29 or Nov. 5. The question is building availability because we want to do the fight in Las Vegas,” said Arum to Dan Rafael at ESPN.com.
Pacquiao’s fight will likely be taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, depending on whether it’s available or not around late October or early November.
“Michael said Manny definitely wants to fight again. Not even a question,” Arum said. “We just have to get an appropriate date.”
The ideal fight that Arum would like for Pacquiao is a rematch against Floyd Mayweather Jr., but it’s doubtful that will happen. Mayweather retired last September after wrapping up his career with a 12 round decision win over Andre Berto. Earlier last year, Mayweather beat an injured Pacquiao by a 12 round decision. Their fight brought in 4.3 million pay-per-view buys on HBO/Showtime, and made both fighters a huge fortune.
If Mayweather and Pacquiao were to fight each other a second time, it’s easy to imagine that their fight would do at least half the numbers of the first fight. 2 million buys would make them both a lot of money. It’s more than about just money at this point for both of them. Mayweather has a huge personal fortune now and he’s not in need of money any longer. With Pacquiao, it’s about redemption. He believes he can do better if healthy. It would be interesting to see how Pacquiao fights in a second bout with Mayweather if 100 percent healthy. I have a feeling that the outcome wouldn’t be any different than the first time they fought. What I would hate to see is Pacquiao come up with another injury excuse if he loses once again. That would be sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj6GLvurxlo
If Arum is going to quickly look to nail down an opponent for Pacquiao’s next fight, then the chances of a rematch between him and Mayweather would seem unlikely. In the past when Arum would book dates well ahead a time for Pacquiao, this seemed to be a show stopper for Mayweather. He wasn’t going to agree to the dates that Arum set. If Arum is going to have Pacquiao quickly pick between Crawford and Vargas, then there’s no way that Mayweather will be able to fight Pacquiao.
You’ve got to hope that Arum is at least trying to get in touch with Mayweather or Haymon to see if there’s any interest in a rematch against Pacquiao. If Pacquiao is stuck having to choose between Vargas or Crawford for his next fight, then there will be no chance for a big money rematch against Mayweather. It would obviously help Arum and his Top Rank promotional company if Pacquiao agrees to fight Vargas or Crawford, because it would make them more valuable to him in theory depending on how they perform against Pacquiao.
Pacquiao’s surgically repaired right shoulder looked pretty good in his last fight against Bradley last April. It wasn’t at the same strength that he had before the surgery, but it was still at least a weapon for him against Bradley. Pacquiao obviously hasn’t been training lately in terms of boxing training, but it would be great if his shoulder is stronger and more flexible than it looked against Bradley.
“I worked very, very hard with Al to make the Broner fight but Al was never able to bring Broner around to a realistic number,” Arum said. “He wanted what we haven’t paid anybody in a long time. Just a crazy number. In effect he wanted parity with Manny and Al agreed that he couldn’t do anything with him. The kid is crazy.”
Whether Broner is crazy or not depends on what was being offered to him by Arum. If all they were giving him was a small slice of the financial pie, then you can’t blame him for asking for more. If guys like Juan Manuel Marquez were getting 25 percent of the revenue for a fight against Pacquiao, then Broner should at least be getting that much.