Mayweather wins Pacquiao’s poll to determine next opponent

By Boxing News - 03/24/2019 - Comments

Image: Mayweather wins Pacquiao's poll to determine next opponent

By Chris Williams: The fans have spoken and they’ve picked Floyd Mayweather Jr. by an overwhelming margin to be Manny Pacquiao’s next opponent when he returns to the ring in June or July. Pacquiao, 40, created a four-fighter poll on his Twitter site asking his boxing fans to select his next opponent from the small list of fighters: Mayweather Jr., Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter.

73% of the fans selected Mayweather as the fighter they want to see Pacquiao fight next. The runner up is Thurman at 13% followed by Danny Garcia at 9% and Shawn Porter at 5%.

A glaring omission from Pacquiao’s 4-fighter list is Errol Spence Jr., who he recently agreed to fight next. It was only eight days ago that Pacquiao climbed into the ring at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas and accepted a challenge from IBF welterweight champion Spence to be his next opponent. Unfortunately, Pacquiao seems to have had a change of money, as he left Spence’s name off his four-fighter poll that he asked his fans to select from in picking his next opponent.

Pacquiao has taken a lot of heat from boxing fans for creating a 4-fighter poll without Errol Spence’s name being among the four fighters listed. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if Pacquiao hadn’t agreed to fight Spence last week when the Filipino star entered the ring moments after his win over Mikey Garcia in Arlington, Texas. If Pacquiao had no interest in fighting Spence, then he should have entered the ring and agreed to face him.

Just because Mayweather won the poll doesn’t mean that he’s going to agree to fight Pacquiao. It was probably pointless for Pacquiao to include Mayweather’s name on the list in the first place, seeing that he would clearly win the poll, get a lot of boxing fans excited, and then the fight would still not happen. Instead of having Mayweather’s name on the list, Pacquiao should have focused on active welterweights that actually want to fight. In that case, Spence and Terence Crawford would have been great choices in place of Mayweather and Danny Garcia. This isn’t a knock on Danny, but he’s lost two out of his last three fights, and he’s not suitable to be fighting a superstar like Pacquiao based on the direction his career is going in right now, which is clearly downwards.

If Mayweather chooses to fight Pacquiao next, then his poll will have meant something, but since that’s not likely to happen, Manny should have left his name off the list.