(L-R): CEO of Mayweather Promotions Leonard Ellerbe, WBC/WBA welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, and Top Rank Founder and CEO Bob Arum pose during a news conference at the KA Theatre at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on April 29, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mayweather and Pacquiao will face each other in a unification bout on May 2, 2015 in Las Vegas. AFP PHOTO / JOHN GURZINSKI / AFP PHOTO / JOHN GURZINSKI
HOLLYWOOD—It wasn’t just eye contact between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. at ringside, after all.
Mayweather, the flamboyant American who retired as unbeaten champion, gave his former ring rival the thumbs up after Pacquiao’s dominant conquest of Jessie Vargas on Saturday night at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
“He (Mayweather) was having eye contact (with Pacquiao),” said Mike Koncz, Pacquiao’s adviser. “Yeah, because even after the fight, when Manny stood in that corner and and put his hands up for his fans, he looked at Floyd and Floyd gave him the thumbs up. i saw it.”
That little gesture could be a sign of bigger things to come as Mayweather had announced that he’s contemplating on returning to the ring he ruled with Pacquiao several years back.
Coincidentally, promoter Bob Arum told ESPN on Monday that Pacquiao will definitely fight in the spring and there’s a 75 percent chance that he’d be facing Mayweather in a rematch.
Pacquiao and Mayweather tangled in a super blockbuster in May 2015, with the American beating the eighth-division world champion, who suffered a rotator cuff tear on his right shoulder in the course of the bout, by unanimous decision.
His injury completely healed, Pacquiao staged a virtuoso performance to wrest Vargas’ World Boxing Organization welterweight crown.
With his similarly lopsided victory over Tim Bradley last April 9 factored in, Pacquiao was put back on top of the pound-for-pound rankings by some boxing evaluating bodies.
On Monday, Pacquiao told a small group of foreign and Filipino reporters at his Wynn suite jokingly said that he’s probably in the top 50 of the pound-for-pound list.
Among those cited by Pacquiao as top pound-for-pound contenders are Canelo Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Terence Crawford and Vasyl Lomachenco.
Apart from Mayweather, Koncz said he is also considering Adrien Broner for Pacquiao’s next assignment because the fight will sell.
Nowhere near what a Pacquiao-Mayweather rematch will generate, of course.