Manny Pacquiao AFP PHOTO / TED ALJIBE
It’s already time to ask: Whatever happened to the Manny Pacquiao-Amir Khan world welterweight title fight?
Reading through the damning silence, it’s easy to conclude that the proposed bout has been stalled. By several factors, if we go by what has transpired since the sudden dismissal of Australian Jeff Horn as Pacquiao’s next opponent.
These factors, topped by the absence of the imagined purse ($38 million), have definitely caused a discord.
While it has been assured that everything was A-OK between Pacquiao and his beloved promoter Bob Arum, there has so far been no report about the two talking (to each other) since Pacquiao tried to go it alone and announced he was taking his act to the United Arab Emirates.
In a startling comment after reports that negotiators from the Emirates had dangled a total of $38 million, Arum said the “insane sum turned Pacquiao’s head.”
Next Arum played the sweet uncle by offering to help put up the Pacquiao-Khan bout, but only if they could show proof the imagined purse was truly available.
Michael Koncz, Pacquiao’s adviser who had also figured prominently as a loyal Arum running dog, did fly to Las Vegas last week for a serious conference with Arum.
As there has been no word on that meeting, speculations rose that Koncz has neither been precise nor honest in quoting the huge purse.
This was the same Koncz who played the fall guy by claiming he failed to click the right box during the physical check prior to Pacquiao’s bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2015.
Anyway, Khan no doubt has been very elated with Pacquiao’s open acceptance of him for a next foe. But, with the bout now visibly limping through the snarled negotiations, came the result of the world welterweight unification championship between Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia on Saturday.
The third world welterweight unification fight in history has been described as disastrously dull, no thanks to the undefeated Thurman who got lustily booed in the second half for moving away, while refusing to mix it up.
As could only be expected, the name of Pacquiao, one of the truly gifted and thrilling boxers of his era, came up.
“It’s time for Pacquiao vs Thurman…and Manny wins!” said Gabriel Miculescu of the Romanian-US Fulbright Commission on Facebook.
Pacquiao, by the way, is the reigning WBO world welterweight champion, a fact which never got mentioned in the run-up to the WBC-WBA unification fight between Thurman and Garcia, once a lead prospect for a Pacquiao foe.