By Allan Fox: Manny Pacquiao did a good job of disguising his disappointment on Saturday night in reacting to Conor McGregor’s second-round knockout loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 257.
McGregor, 32, has been mentioned as a possible opponent for Pacquiao in 2021 in a boxing match. Unfortunately, tonight’s loss for the former two-division UFC champion McGregor might have ruined his chances of facing the 42-year-old Pacquiao.
As far as tonight’s McGregor-Poirier goes, McGregor was caught by a left hand from Poirier in the second round.
The shot hurt McGregor. Poirier smelled blood in the water, and he went after McGregor, hitting him with combination and finishing with a left tat dropped him.
When McGregor went down, Poirier followed with two lefts to the head and a right. The referee then stepped in and halted the fight.
It was a good thing that he did because McGregor would have likely been knocked unconscious. The win for Poirier avenges his loss to McGregor from 2014. McGregor’s defeat was the first in his career in which he’d been knocked dout.
Beautiful thing about the fight game, anything can happen! Congrats to @DustinPoirier Huge win! #UFC257
— Manny Pacquiao (@MannyPacquiao) January 24, 2021
Pacquiao can still fight McGregor if he wants, but it might not bring in the same amount of revenue on PPV as it would have at this point. It might be better for Pacquiao to forget about McGregor and focus instead on fighting a boxer.
Pacquiao could be facing Ryan Garcia next in the first half of this year. The unbeaten lightweight contender Garcia (21-0, 18 KOs) said on Saturday that his fight is close to being finalized. Garcia didn’t mention who his opponent is, but he’s been dropping hints that make it clear that it’s Pacquiao that he’ll be facing.
Fans are getting burned out at buying fights that wind up as mismatches. Floyd Mayweather Jr’s exhibition match against YouTuber Logan Paul is rumored to be postponed until a later date.
The rumors are that the interest and early PPV sales for the event haven’t been as good as originally thought. With Mayweather and Paul getting a lot of money for their fight, the pay-per-view sales need to be high enough to cover their purses.
McGregor will probably need to redeem himself by getting a solid win for him to be a useful opponent for Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr to fight. Mayweather and Pacquiao can’t use McGregor as an opponent with him coming off a knockout loss. Pacquiao can do better than this if he wants to fight an opponent from the UFC.