Manny Pacquiao has made the decision that he wants a fight against Mikey Garcia next, and that means Terence Crawford will need to give up on his hopes of facing the Filipino star.
Mikey is pretty much at the level of a Conor McGregor or Ryan Garcia type of opponent for Pacquiao. The odds of the smallish Mikey beating Pacquiao are extremely low.
It’s not that Mikey doesn’t have the power to give Manny something to think about. What will hold Mikey back from beating Pacquiao and perhaps a dozen of the top welterweights is his low work rate. Mikey doesn’t throw enough punches to beat a world-class welterweight like Pacquiao.
Throwing 20 punches per round isn’t enough for Mikey to be able to compete with a fighter in the class of Pacquiao, and that’s why it’s such a bad mismatch.
Crawford (37-0, 28 KOs) has been after a fight against the former eight-division world champion Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) for almost a decade now, and he has nothing to show for it.
Hopefully, Crawford doesn’t continue to pine away for the Pacquiao fight year after year, because it’s clear that he’s not going to get that fight ever.
This week, Pacquiao told ABSCBNNews that he’s “leaning” in the direction of facing the former four-division world champion Mikey (40-1, 33 KOs).
What does Mikey bring to the table for Pacquiao?
Even though Mikey Garcia done next to nothing with his career since 2018, he’s someone that will bring in the fans that remember him back when he was still trying to achieve things with his career.
Some boxing fans will be interested enough to see Pacquiao face Mikey fight on pay-per-view, but not as many as Manny might think.
The perception is that Mikey is just trying to cash-out against Pacquiao without any hope of winning. It’s just about money without any sporting value whatsoever. Mikey looked so horribly bad in his fights against Jessie Vargas and Errol Spence Jr at 147.
The thing is, hardcore boxing fans know how poor of a fighter Mikey is at 147, and they’re not going to want to waste their money during the pandemic on this mismatch.
In better times when the economy in the U.S was running at full strength, fans wouldn’t mind throwing their money away on a mismatch like Pacquiao vs. Mikey, but now.
If Mikey had been willing to prove himself first at 147 by fighting a good welterweight, that would have helped make a fight between him and Pacquiao a lot bigger. Sadly, Mikey has done zero to build his credibility.
For all intents and purposes, Mikey gave up on winning world titles in 2019 when he moved up to 147 to take on IBF champion Errol Spence Jr in a fight that was basically just a glorified cash-grab for him and Errol.
Unfortunately for Mikey, his career was halted for 2 1/2 years when he ran into promotional problems with Top Rank in 2014. Mikey didn’t fight again until 2016 when he came back to defeat Elio Rojas.
In the last five years since his comeback in 2016, Mikey has fought just seven times. To say that he’s failed to get the most out of his career is a massive understatement. Mikey could have fought three times the number of fights in the last five years and made a lot more money.
If you’re the 42-year-old Manny, it makes all the sense in the world for him to face Mikey rather than WBO welterweight champion Crawford or Errol Spence Jr. The odds of Pacquiao beating either of those two world champions are embarrassingly low, and he likely knows that.
Crawford needs to stop talking about Pacquiao, and the same with his promote Bob Arum because it’s pointless. They’re just wasting time that could be better spent on putting a match together with Shawn Porter.
Crawford vs. Porter is a fight that CAN be made, quite easily, in fact. I’m not sure if Crawford is gun-ho about the idea of fighting Porter, but that’s for him to decide.
