Playing Promotor: Building a Money Maker
By Eddie Sanchez
Boxing is a fascinating sport. It’s a young man’s world, dominated by individuals in their twenties to early thirties, though more often than not, the elder statesmen will hang around as long as they possibly can. Whether this is due to financial necessity or the inability to turn off their competitive spirit, the fact remains that it isn’t very hard to find older legends competing across the sport.
The key is to manage your career accordingly. Fighters should not want to go down the Roy Jones Jr. route. RJJ has notoriously hung around so long that at 54 years of age, he lost a professional boxing match to mixed martial artist Anthony Pettis. That is a steep fall from grace and makes him nearly unrecognizable from his heyday as the P4P #1 boxer in the world.
This is the caution that men like 48-year-old Sergio Martinez (57-3-2, 32 KO) and 44-year-old Manny Pacquiao (62-8-2, 39 KO) should take when considering their next moves in the sport. Each is following a unique path, though there may be an opportunity for those paths to cross.
Manny Pacquiao last fought professionally in August 2021, in a unanimous decision loss to Yordenis Ugas. Since then, Pacquiao participated in a 2022 exhibition match and most recently has scheduled another with Thai Kickboxing legend Buakaw Banchamek for early 2024. This is a matchup between respective combat sports legends, though it doesn’t necessarily scratch the itch for Pacquiao.
“I’m coming back,” Pacquiao told 210 Boxing TV. This response from the Filipino legend has come two weeks after Freddy Roach echoed a similar sentiment that “he wants a real fight.”
An interesting nugget about Pacquiao vs Buakaw is that the weight for this bout is 70kgs or 155 pounds. If this was a professional boxing match, this would see Pacquiao fighting in the Middleweight division, which would be the ninth and highest division he would compete in.
With Pacquiao and Roach entertaining the possibility of a comeback fight, the long-time partners should take a page out of the Mayweather playbook and search for a balance between money-earning potential and risk. With that theme in mind, Pacquiao’s camp should give fellow southpaw, Sergio Martinez, a call.
Martinez is in the middle of his own comeback tour. Once regarded as one of the most avoided men in the sport, Martinez was a shell of himself during his 2014 loss to Miguel Cotto. His knees were clearly damaged, and his mobility was compromised, leading to a knockout defeat. Fast-forward to the current day, Martinez looks stronger than ever and has won six fights since his official comeback in 2020, including his most recent knockout victory over Jhon Teheran in March 2023.
Despite the level of competition he has faced, the WBA has awarded Martinez with a #3 ranking in the Middleweight division. This cache offers Martinez a great opportunity to compete in a blockbuster event. With Manny Pacquiao now in striking distance when you consider fighting weight, Pacquiao could use his exhibition against Buakaw to prepare his body for a fight against Sergio Martinez.
This is the type of fight that would sell given their legendary careers. This would also offer them an opportunity to fight someone who isn’t in their respective prime. So what do we say – Pacquiao vs Martinez in 2024? I say, why not!
