By Chris Williams: Instead of Manny Pacquiao fighting a notable name for his next fight, he’s reportedly signed a contract for a July 2nd match against little known Top Rank fighter Jeff Horn (16-0-1, 11 KOs) for a match tht will be likely taking place at Suncorps Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz has confirmed the news.
“We signed the Jeff Horn contract this morning. Fight is July 2 in Brisbane, Australia,” Koncz said to AFP.
Jeff Horn is a fighter from Australia that competed in the 2012 Olympics. He was beaten by Denys Berinchyk by a 21-13 score. Berinchyk went on to fight in the gold medal match, losing to Roniel Iglesias 22-15 from Cuba. Horn can punch a little, but he’s slow and he doesn’t look in the same league as the top fighters in the welterweight division. Someone like Errol Spence Jr. or Keith Thurman would be a real problem for Horn. I doubt that Horn will ever fight either of those guys, which is good for him, because they’re really match-ups.
Horn might have enough youth to beat Pacquiao though. Pacquiao looked terrible in his last fight against Jessie Vargas. Pacquiao looked gun shy, like he was afraid to mix it up for fear of getting hit by Vargas’ right hand. Pacquiao did get hit a lot in that fight, but he did enough to win an unimpressive 12 round decision. Horn vs. Vargas would be a good fight. I think it would be a very close contest. Both guys are decent fighters, but extremely flawed. I think Tim Bradley would be too much for Horn. Arum was said to be interested in matching Horn against Bradley.
You have to wonder what made Arum change his mind about making that fight. I guess it would have been a bad idea for Arum to make that fight if his long term goal was to put Horn in with Pacquiao. That long term goal became a short term goal when Arum decided to make the Pacquiao-Horn fight without building Horn up ahead of time. Why didn’t Arum put in the effort to build up the Pacquiao vs. Horn fight? That’s the big question. Was he concerned that Horn didn’t have the talent to beat someone like Jessie Vargas or Bradley or was Arum worried that Pacquiao would lose to one of the top contenders in the World Boxing Organization’s top 15 ranking. There’s nobody especially talented in the WBO’s top 15 rankings. Arum could have matchd Pacquiao against fellow Top Rank fighter Konstantin Ponomarev, who is rated #6 with the WBO. Of course, the PPV numbers from the U.S for such a fight would likely have been low.
Amir Khan was in the running for the fight against Pacquiao for a brief while. The fight would have taken place in the UAE, but the money offer from businessmen in that country failed to come through. The offer was $38 million. Khan still has a chance of fighting Pacquiao later this year, but it’s unlikely to happen. If Pacquiao doesn’t retire after the Horn fight, then the mostly likely option for him is either Terence Crawford or Vasyl Lomachenko. Both of those fighters are with Top Rank. Crawford has to be seen as the logical choice. Supposedly, it’s always up to Pacquiao who he wants to fight, but I think he’s going to make his promoter Arum happy by agreeing to fight Crawford this year.
Pacquiao didn’t seem at all interested in his promoter Bob Arum’s choice of putting him in with Jeff Horn. We heard Pacquiao saying he had never heard of Jeff Horn when the boxing media first brought his name up to him. Later, Pacquiao created a poll on his Twitter site asking the fans who he should fight next. The fans put Horn the last of 4 choices. I imagine if Pacquiao had made a poll consisting of 10 or more fighters, Horn would have been at the button of that list as well. But that’s not what this is about. Horn is one Arum’s fighters in his Top Rank stable, and there’s money to be made from Australia. They have a lively PPV market in that country that can be tapped into for the Pacquiao-Horn fight and for subsequent fights of Horn and Arum’s other Top Rank fighters from Australia.
Terence Crawford could be the next opponent for Pacquiao later this year after Horn if the Filipino star doesn’t retire. If Arum pushes hard for Crawford to be the next guy for Pacquiao, I see that as being the fight he takes. I don’t think it’s going to make Crawford a star, but it might win a few more fans if he doesn’t run around the ring and make it boring like he did against John Molina Jr. and Viktor Postol in his last 2 fights.
Pacquiao, 38, will be defending his World Boxing Organization welterweight title against the No.2 WBO rated challenger Jeff Horn. If Pacquiao loses the fight, his WBO title will go to Horn, who is also with Top Rank. It would be the perfect setup for unbeaten Terence Crawford to move up from light welterweight to take the title from Horn. Crawford is also with Top Rank. Other fighters in Arum’s Top Rank stable would be circling Horn and looking to pick him off if he wins the WBO title from Pacquiao.
You can bet that Tim Bradley and Jessie Vargas would want a piece of Horn. Those guys would have a very good chance of beating him if Pacquiao doesn’t insist on a rematch. At this point in Pacquiao’s career, you can’t really tell what he would do. He might retire if he loses. That’s obviously not good news for Arum, because it’s doubtful that Horn will ever be a star in the U.S. Crawford, Bradley and Vargas don’t appear to be able to step into Pacquiao’s shoes to be the next PPV star for Arum.
Horn, 29, is the guy that Pacquiao’s Top Rank promoter Bob Aurm has wanted all along. Last year, Arum had said that his intentions were to match his fighter Horn against Pacquiao in 2017 he built Horn up against the likes of Jessie Vargas or Tim Bradley. Neither of those fights ever happened. Horn is getting the Pacquiao fight anyway with a buildup of any kind for the obscure Australian fighter. The only names that Horn has fought in the past that are recognizable to some fans in the U.S is 43-year-old Randall Bailey and 38-year-old Ali Funeka. Both fighters dropped Horn. He still knocked them out, but it’s troubling that the 85-year-old Arum is matching Pacquiao against this level of a fighter.
Arum thinks it’ll make a good story in matching Pacquiao against Horn, just like he thought it would make a great story of matching Pacquiao against Chris Algieri in 2014. That fight brought in 400,000 buys on HBO PPV. That was a low number at the time. I bet Arum would be happy if Pacquiao-Horn brought in that number, because the Filipino star’s numbers on PPV have dropped recently with him making just 300,000 buys for his last fight against Jessie Vargas on November 5 last year. That fight wasn’t televised by HBO. Arum had it on Top Rank PPV.
Pacquiao retired last year following his win over Tim Bradley in their needless third fight together. It was thought that Pacquiao would stay retired because he had been elected into the senate in the Philippines, which is a full time job. He missed fighting, so he returned to the ring last year to fight one Arum’s guys Jessie Vargas. At the time, Vargas was the WBO welterweight champion after picking up the vacant title against Sadam Ali. Pacquiao beat Vargas fairly easily by a 12 round unanimous decision last September, but he looked far from good in that fight.
There are a lot of good fights still out there for Pacquiao, but unfortunately we’re likely never to see any of them. Arum doesn’t seem interested in matching Pacquiao against Danny Garcia or Keith Thurman. If all Pacquiao is going to be doing the remainder of his career is fighting guys like Crawford and Lomachenko, it’s going to be a disappointment to a lot of boxing fans. They want to see him fight the best welterweights. The last time I checked, Crawford and Lomachenko aren’t welterweights. Horn is an unproven welterweight, who doesn’t deserve to be fighting for a world title in my view. He should have had to at least fight a contender to earn his #2 ranking.