Manny Pacquiao’s Next Fight Finally Confirmed:
Manny Pacquiao vs. Timothy Bradley III, the rubbermatch nobody needed or wanted to see, has been made official for April 9th, 2016. The Pacquiao vs. Bradley fight will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, as reported by Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports, and will be shown on HBO pay-per-view.
While Pacquiao vs. Bradley III is technically a rubbermatch, that’s not really the case. Bradley defeated Pacquiao in their first match-up, in one of the more controversial decisions in big fight history of the past few decades. Pacquiao went on to be knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in his next fight.
He came back against an out-gunned Brandon Rios, and then met Bradley in the rematch. Desert Storm acquitted himself better in the second meeting but still didn’t do near enough to be in the mix to win the fight. So it’s really been two clear Pacquiao victories, and with the rematch having wiped the stain away from the original wrongdoing, why do it a 3rd time?
From a purely rankings standpoint, it’s not as if Bradley is a poor opponent. He’s our number 4 welterweight, right behind Pacquiao. But we’ve seen this story twice already, and it ended the same way for anyone viewing the fight from an unbiased perspective. There’s just no need for it.
What we’ve long forecasted is that Top Rank is setting up a Manny Pacquiao vs. Terence Crawford passing of the torch fight. Unless Pacquiao was making this his last fight, then it would have been too soon for that. So our guess is that Pacquiao vs. Crawford is still what lies ahead, whether it’s at the end of 2016 or start of 2017.
Until then, we’ll have to brace ourselves for several months of hype for Pacquiao vs. Bradley III and why this is suddenly such an important fight we should be watching.
