Errol Spence Jr is finally starting to realize that Manny Pacquiao never intended to fight him when he sat in the audience for his fight against Mikey Garcia in March of 2019 in Arlington, Texas.
Spence (26-0, 21 KOs) feels that the Filipino star Pacquiao showed up at his fight at AT&T Stadium in hopes of grabbing the MIC inside the ring afterward to call out Mikey.
But when Spence dominated Mikey in a one-sided 12 round decision, Pacquiao looked lost and not eager to call out Errol. The rest is history. Instead of Pacquiao facing Spence in his next fight, he opted to meet the arguably easier target in WBA welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman last year in July 2019
Was Pacquiao only interested in calling out Mikey?
Most boxing fans believed that the only reason Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) attended the Spence-Garcia fight was his hopes that Mikey 40-1, 30 KOs) would win, and then he would call him out.
What’s interesting is that Pacquiao still isn’t showing interest in fighting Spence, even after his win over Thurman. The fact that Pacquiao hasn’t made any attempt at negotiating a fight with Spence for 2020 suggests that he’s never going to fight him.
The president of Manny Pacquiao promotions, Sean Gibbons, posted a photo on Instagram a week ago, showing a picture of Mikey Garcia and Thurman standing next to each other. Gibbons included these words to the description: “One down one to go.”
Boxing fans saw that post by Gibbons as a mini-announcement for who the 41-year-old Pacquiao will be fighting next when he returns to the ring in 2020 or 2021.
Spence thought he had a chance to fight Manny
You got to feel sorry for Spence because he thought he was going to get a fight against Pacquiao after his win over Mikey. Why else would Manny show up for the match unless he was interested in fighting the winner?
If Pacquiao wasn’t interested in fighting the Spence-Garcia winner, then he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by watching the fight at home.
Spence will be fighting Danny Garcia next on November 21 on Fox pay-per-view. There still isn’t a venue yet, but that’s not big a deal. It’s going to take place behind closed doors, so the site isn’t all that important.
