By Chris Williams: It looks like Top Rank promoter Bob Arum won’t need to do much persuading to get his main money maker Manny Pacquiao to agree to fight fellow Top Rank fighter WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs) in the first quarter of 2017.
Pacquiao was asked if he’d be willing to fight the 28-year-old Lomachenko, and he quickly smiled and revealed that he can get down to 135 to fight still. The way that Pacquiao said it, you could tell that he likes the idea of fighting Lomachenko.
By Chris Williams: To many boxing fans, the Manny Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas fight is not much of a fight in terms of the potential big fights out there in the sport. The Pacquiao-Vargas fight, which will be taking place on November 5, hasn’t appeared to catch on with the fans.
Pacquiao and Vargas’ promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank believes the fight is going to do really well on pay-per-view, because he believes that the 27-year-old Vargas will bring in the Hispanic fans to purchase the fight.
By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is eager to match former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) against WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs) in his next fight if Manny gets past WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) in their fight on November 5, and if Lomachenko wins his match against former WBA featherweight champion Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs) in their fight on November 26.
There are a lot of ifs involved in a fight between Pacquiao and Lomachenko taking place. They would both need to win their next fights, and they would need to be agreeable to fighting each other.
Arum doesn’t think the 5’6″ Lomachenko is too small for Pacquiao, even though he fights three divisions below him at super featherweight. Pacquiao would need to drop down to at least light welterweight [140lbs] for a fight between him and Lomachenko to be a possibility. He might even need to drop lower than with a catch-weight fight below 140. Lomachenko would still be too light for Pacquiao if they fought at 140. If they fought each other at 137, it might be possible, but the results of the fight would likely be tainted because neither fighter would be at their best weight.
By Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum recently joked of wanting to put him in with KO artist Gennady Golovkin, but now it appears that Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is interested in matching him against WBO junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Roach says he’s not concerned with the size of the 26-year-old Canelo, who some boxing fans believe he rehydrates into the 180s for his fights, as long as he can get him to agree to a rehydration limit.
Roach feels that Pacquiao will whip Canelo’s backside if he can get him to agree to a fight with a set rehydration limit. Roach wants to keep Canelo from rehydrating 30 pounds after he weighs in. Roach feels that Pacquiao can beat Canelo, but not if the Mexican star is 30 pounds heavier than him on fight night.
By Dan Ambrose: The struggling former two division world champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (33-5-1, 18 KOs) says he’s hoping to face Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) if he gets past World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) in their fight on November 5 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Guerrero says he wants the big names like Pacquiao and Danny Garcia. However, Guerrero is coming off of a 12 round split decision loss to former Argentinian taxi driver David Peralta (26-2-1, 14 KOs) last August at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao isn’t entirely sure whether he’ll continue his boxing career after he challenges WBO 147lb champion Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) on November 5 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao, 36, doesn’t want to look past his fight against Vargas to make a decision on his career at this point.
Things could work badly for the 5’6 1/2” Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs), because he’s facing a guy a lot bigger than him in the 5’10 ½” Vargas. If Pacquiao loses this fight, then it’s pretty clear that he has nowhere to go at least in the 147lb division.
FREDDIE ROACH: It was a pretty tough schedule in this camp but he held up really well. The sparring days were really good and it’s the best I’ve seen Manny in a long time – he is a lot more aggressive than I have seen him in the past and there was a lot of the old Manny Pacquiao coming out and he really, really looked good. We trained right up until Saturday morning before our flight out to Los Angeles and he boxed 10 rounds and he looked great and he’s in great shape, I know it’s been a very difficult camp with the Senate and so forth. Manny has always been a busy person but because of the Senate he seems to be a lot more serious than anything else he has done. He is in Senate sessions on some nights until 7:30 or 8:00 at night and when he is done we go right to the gym.
By Chris Williams: There isn’t a lot of excitement in the boxing world about Manny Pacquiao’s title challenge of WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (27-1, 10 KOs) in less than two weeks from now on November 5 on Top Rank pay-per-view. Bob Arum, the promoter of Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) and Vargas, believes their fight is going to bring in very, very HUGE numbers on pay-per-view.
This might be just wishful thinking from the promoter, as the fans seem to be ignoring the fight, and thinking of other fights rather than another in house Top Rank fight that Arum has put together between his stable fighters. My own estimate for the Pacquiao-Vargas pay-per-view buys is in the 300,000 range.
By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum said today that if his fighter Manny Pacquiao looks good against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas on November 5, they might look at middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for Manny to fight.
Arum had to be kidding, but it’s hard to know for sure. Putting Pacquiao in with Golovkin would be one sure fire way to bring the Filipino fighter’s pay-per-view numbers back up to over 1 million buys where they used to be at.
Top Rank (@trboxing) will debut its new and innovative video series, “ALL IN: Pacquiao-Vargas,” Today! Monday. October 24. “ALL IN: Pacquiao-Vargas” is designed to bring the fan closer to the action and the event, taking you … ALL IN. Daily episodes will be released exclusively on Facebook (facebook.com/trboxing) and Twitter (twitter.com/trboxing).
“ALL IN: Pacquiao-Vargas” will follow boxing’s only eight-division world champion and the reigning Fighter of the Decade MANNY “Pacman” PACQUIAO and his opponent World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight world champion JESSIE VARGAS on the road to their world championship collision on November 5 at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.. As the intensity heats up so will the series.
