Manny Pacquiao is reportedly saying he’s going to retire after his third fight against Tim Bradley on April 9th. Pacquiao was recently quoted as saying he wanted to continue fighting after the Bradley fight in order to get a much desired rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. so that he could end up career with a big bang. Never the less, Pacquiao is saying he didn’t make those comments and that he’ll definitely be retiring after the April fight with Bradley.
“I never said that, nobody spoke to me about that. After my fight on April 9th, I’m going to retire from boxing,” Pacquiao said to philboxing.com. “My April 9 fight against Timothy Bradley will be my last. I’m retiring from boxing to focus on my new job.”
You can make an argument that it helps Pacquiao to be saying that he’s retiring after his next fight against Bradley, because the interest in that fight has been zero. It was bad idea and someone should have talked some sense into Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum that there would be little interest in a third fight against Bradley. But by Pacquiao now saying he’s going to retire after this fight, Arum can no market it as a going away fight for Pacquiao.
Some boxing fans that want to see Pacquiao fight for the last time might be willing to pay $70 to see him fight Bradley for a third time. It didn’t work well for Mayweather to play the retirement card for his last fight of his career against Andre Berto last September, but perhaps it might work for Pacquiao and Top Rank.
For me, I have no interest paying to see the Pacquiao-Bradley 3 fight. I stopped watching them fight each other after the first fight. I saw the second fight on replay on HBO, and I’ll do the same with the third fight. I have zero interest paying to see Pacquiao beat Bradley yet again.
Arum said he doesn’t want to promote Pacquiao’s fight with Bradley as the last fight of Pacquiao career, because he doesn’t want to look like a sap if he comes out of retirement and starts fighting again. I don’t think the pay-per-view buys are going to be big unless the fight is marketed as a retirement fight for Pacquiao, because the fight isn’t attracting much interest from the fans. Even if Arum adds 44-year-old heavyweight Ike Ibebuchi to the undercard, I don’t think there’s going to be any interest from fans.
