After his convincing victory over American Jessie Vargas during their WBO welterweight title fight on November 5, possible opponents for the Filipino boxing icon were shortlisted to include WBC welterweight champion Terence Crawford, who watched the Pacquiao-Vargas match at ringside, former WBC welterweight titleholder Danny Garcia, and WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman.
When Pacquiao defeated Vargas to wrest the WBO welterweight championship after a brief retirement, Floyd Mayweather Jr. was actually watching at ringside.
In fact, there were a couple of times during the fight itself that the Filipino boxing icon actually acknowledged Floyd Mayweather Jr through a smile or a nod of the eyebrow.
Mayweather has already retired from the sports months ahead of Pacquiao after defeating Andre Berto in September 2015 and scored his 49th win. His 48th win came via a unanimous decision over Pacquiao in May 2015 in what is regarded as the richest boxing match in history.
Shortly after the Vargas match, Pacquiao made an allusion that he wanted Floyd Mayweather Jr. for his next fight via a cryptic image post on his Instagram.
Pacquiao has made his intentions clear that he wants a rematch with Money when he recently showed a specially-tailored jacket on his Instagram account.
In the picture, the eight-division world boxing champion showed the insides of the jacket’s right breast showing Floyd Mayweather Jr., while the left side showed himself.
Both images appear to be sewn into the lining of the customized jacket. Less than three hours after posting the image on the morning of November 14, Pacquiao’s Instagram post has already generated over 50,000 likes.
A few days later, Floyd Mayweather Jr. publicly came out to say that he will not be coming out of retirement and that a rematch with Pacquiao is not going to happen. But he did say that he might change his mind about it in the near future.
Part of the shortlist
During the Pacquiao-Vargas post-fight interview, which Pacquiao skipped, Top Rank boss Bob Arum hinted that super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko is on the shortlist of potential Pacquaio opponents for 2017.
Lomachencko is due to fight Nicholas Walters for the WBO super featherweight title at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas soon and during the conference call this week, Arum cited it again.
Lomachenko is a two-time Olympic gold medalist who is 6-1 with four knockouts as a pro. He said that he is interested in a Pacquiao fight, but not in his next outing.
Pacquiao is expected to fight at least twice in 2017 and Lomachenko could be the second of those, details Yahoo! Sports.
Arum says that Lomachenko wants challenges and he is a tremendous talent. His upside is enormous and a lot of people are watching him, not just boxing fans, because he is an unbelievable talent. They see him on YouTube and on HBO and have said what an unbelievable talent he is, explains the Top Rank chief.
Arum has also gone to great lengths, though, to insist that it is Pacquiao who picks his opponents. Arum said he simply presents possibilities and Pacquiao chooses.
A Pacquiao-Lomachenko fight would be fascinating on many levels, even though it would be one in which Pacquiao would have a significant size advantage. And it’s a fight that Lomachenko would have the ability to win. Pacquiao would likely be favored, and justifiably so, but Lomachenko is a mega-talent who could pull it off.
But the Filipino boxing champion has yet to comment on the possibility.
A new boxing gym in Japan
Meanwhile, Manny Pacquiao said he would carry on fighting next year after unveiling a new boxing gym in downtown Tokyo on November 25.
The 37-year-old southpaw returned to the ring after a seven-month retirement to claim the WBO welterweight title by beating Jessie Vargas in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Pacquiao has a 59-6-2 win-loss-draw record and is the winner of world titles in eight different weight divisions and the first sitting Senator to win a world boxing title.