Khan misses out on a fight against Pacquiao

The 37-year-old, who owns a record of 57-6-2 with 38 knockouts, hasn’t fought since a May 2 unanimous decision loss to unbeaten Floyd Mayweather in their long-awaited bout that shattered revenue records for the sport, generating some 4.5 million pay-per-view purchases and $600 million in gross revenue. “Then he spent six months chasing Manny Pacquiao”. “It’s still what he does best, and he knows that”. “The question is, can Manny beat this Bradley“. He doesn’t seem to want to fight anybody. There won’t be any surprises in store for Pacquiao unless Bradley has suddenly developed punching power at age 32. He’s the finished product at this point in his career. They all change their minds so I’m not selling it as his last fight.

“Desert Storm’s” rubber match with the first and only eight-division world champion would be for the latter’s 66th and final fight, before calling it quits after two decades of professional boxing to focus on being a public servant. “Teddy Atlas has turned him into a completely different fighter”. He looked so bad that Bradley would have likely beaten him easily even if he had trained himself for the fight.

Pitted against the steel-jawed Brandon Rios, Bradley knocked out the rugged Rios with a body shot, something Pacquiao was unable to do when he faced Rios in 2013. In the first one, Bradley won a controversial 12-round split decision. Rios basically came into the fight with Bradley with 3 defeats in his last 5 fights. “These fighters have fought for me for many years”, he said, adding that the fight would be formally announced in January.

Roach, now training light-heavyweight Jean Pascal for his January 30 title fight against champion Sergey Kovalev in Montreal, said he has yet to finalize if he’ll start Pacquiao’s camp in the Philippines or in Hollywood. In short, the Top Rank promoter still hasn’t realized that the fans wanted someone new in the mix and not a third fight, especially given that most believed Pacquiao dominated both previous meetings. Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz would also like to see Pacquiao train in Los Angeles rather than in the Philippines because he’s also concerned with the distractions that Pacquiao would have. The announcement was greeted with some derision by boxing fans who were hoping for a fresher face with Terence Crawford and Amir Khan also in contention to land the assignment.