Manny Pacquiao camp wants no part of Terence Crawford

Smart thinking could cost fans a Manny Pacquiao, Terence Crawford fight.

In boxing and in life, learning to pick your battles can be the difference between earning a few bumps and bruises and coming out unscathed. Floyd Mayweather Jr. earned plenty of his 49-0 career victories by playing it that way. Manny Pacquiao, on the other hand, comes off as the complete opposite.

That was evident when Top Rank’s CEO and promoter, Bob Arum, was quoted by boxingscene.com as saying that “Manny has already said yes,” to fighting Terence Crawford (29-0) in his first fight fresh out of retirement in November. Which is a clear contradiction of the statement from Pacquiao’s adviser, Michael Koncz, that the 140-pounder would not be an option.

The buzz from the boxing world suggests that is that Crawford versus Pacquiao would be a fight that fans would enjoy having already been denied a slugfest between Canelo Alvarez (47-1-1) and Gennady Golovkin (35-0). However, if Freddie Roach’s opinion really matters, the unified super lightweight title holder would not be a first or second option:

"“I don’t think we are going to accept or want the Crawford fight for Manny straight away. We will take it in the future, give me one warm-up fight and a fight right after that and then we can talk.”"

From the sounds of it, Pacquiao’s trainer does not want any part of Ring magazine’s fifth-ranked pound-for-pound fighter. At least not while he considers the 28-year-old heavy hitter to be “a young Mayweather.” And definitely not when his 37-year-old brawler is likely to walk right into Crawford’s punches — something he even does when he has no ring rust on him.

Dodging the upstart may be a logical strategy coming from the camp that once taunted Mayweather for seemingly ducking an eventual underwhelming mega fight.