Manny Pacquiao To Fight Floyd Mayweather Next, Not Keith Thurman
Manny Pacquiao To Fight Floyd Mayweather Next, Not Keith Thurman
Manny Pacquiao To Fight Floyd Mayweather Next, Not Keith Thurman
Manny Pacquiao will fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. next, not Keith Thurman.
Thurman, 30, desperately wishes that this were not the case. He firmly believes that he deserves another crack at Pacquiao and that a rematch between the pair would be more exciting than a rematch between Pacquiao and Mayweather.
“At the end of the day, nobody wants to see it,” Thurman said in regards to Mayweather-Pacquiao II.
“Real fight fans know,” he continued. “It ain’t gonna be more exciting than what Keith Thurman just did.”
The problem with that assessment is that it is, to be frank, inaccurate.
Not only would a second bout between Pacquiao and Thurman not generate as much hype as Mayweather-Pacquiao II, but if we are being honest, Thurman did not earn a second fight against the Filipino champion.
Yes, the pair’s July 2019 showdown from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, ended in a split decision. But no, it was not the sort of split decision where spectators shrug their shoulders and say, “That one could have gone either way.”
When the final bell rang, the victory was very clearly Pacquiao’s. Surely enough, a pair of judges ruled it in Pacquiao’s favor 115-112 and one ruled 114-113 for Thurman.
Thurman probably believes that he because he was the more accurate fighter that night, it means he was the better fighter. Sure, there is no denying that he was the more accurate fighter. He landed on 43 percent of his power punches (192 out of 443) compared to Pacquiao’s 33 percent (113 out of 340). And yes, he landed 37 percent of his total shots (210 out of 571 punches) versus Pacquiao’s 28 percent (195 out of 686).
But when you look back at the biggest moments of the pair’s fight, the ones that truly changed the tide of the match, it is obvious that Pacquiao was consistently in control.
In the first round, Pacquiao downed Thurman with a hard right hand that clearly did a whole lot of damage. Then, in the tenth round, Pacquiao once again sent Thurman running with a vicious body shot.
Pacquiao did the most serious damage of the night, not Thurman.
That is why the 40-year-old become the oldest welterweight to win a major world title in boxing history when he went home with the WBA (Super) welterweight championship.
As Game 7 previously reported, Pacquiao is not interested in another fight against Thurman unless it is a last resort. The Filipino champion has his sights set on Mayweather so that both men can collect the massive paydays due to them at this stage of their careers.
Obviously that is not to say that Thurman definitely will not get another crack at Pacquiao. If Mayweather decides he does not want the rematch, and the money is right, Pacquiao-Thurman II could go down. But it is definitely not a priority for anyone.
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Michael Kyaw, initially a PR Manager, built up a valuable network of connections in the sports world that he then utilized to become an influential sports business reporter. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, Fansided, ESPN and the Wall Street Journal.
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