By David Martinez / dmboxing.com
This past week, I enjoyed Manny Pacquiao as guest on Fox Sports 1 “Undisputed” hosted by Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe.
Pacquiao, the former eight-division champion (61-7-2 / 39 by KO) and current WBA “Regular” Champion, made it very clear that he wants a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. (50-0 / 27 by KO), but he first has to take care of business in his upcoming July 20 welterweight showdown with unbeaten WBA Champion Keith Thurman (29-0 / 22 by KO) in Las Vegas.
At the age of 40, and Mayweather 42 years old, does anybody really want this match?
Their fight in May 2015 was the highest grossing PPV boxing event in history, and I doubt a rematch will even come close.
On the TV show, Pacquiao said “I still deserved the win, but respect the judges.” The judges scores were unanimous 116-112, 116-112, 118-110 … my scorecard was 9 to 3 in rounds, 117-111, for the winner Mayweather.
Since the loss to Mayweather, Pacquiao is 4-1, with convincing wins over Timothy Bradley, Jr., Jesse Vargas, Lucas Matthysee and Adrien Broner, with the lone loss a highly questionable decision to – then unbeaten – Jeff Horn on his home turf of Australia.
Although it makes for good conversation, I personally don’t think a return match with Mayweather will come about, but the one thing that Pacquiao clearly sees is how rich the current welterweight division is (with some big pay days ahead) and the unbelievable talent there such as Terence Crawford (35-0 / 26 by KO), Errol Spence, Jr. (25-0 / 21 by KO), Shawn Porter (30-2 / 17 by KO), Danny Garcia (34-2 / 20 by KO), Jeff Horn (19-1-1 / 13 by KO), Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-0-1 / 17 by KO), and Keith Thurman.
The photo I am including is one of my favorites of Manny Pacquiao, myself, and the late Rusty Rubin, taken at the Wild Card Gym, Los Angeles. Rusty was an author, as well as founder and editor of Ring Sports Magazine that covered many boxing events. In July 2017, Rusty was my first writer with his featured column “In Rusty’s Corner” and his “Glove2Glove” that offered prayers for the deceased and the sick and needy. Rusty was a wonderful human being, and friend. He will never be forgotten on my website. In his honor, I keep his name embedded in the Categories menu section for viewing forever (R.I.P.).
A second fight right now is pointless imo. Manny is a favorite of mine too, but Floyd is retired. Leave it alone Manny, you are already a first ballot HOF’er