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Chris Williams: For U.S boxing fans interested in seeing Manny Pacquiao's fight against Lucas Matthysse on July 14, they'll have to find $ 5 to buy the fight on ESPN +. This Top Rank decision of having Pacquiao-Matthysse fight on ESPN + means that a lot of boxing fans will not see the fight, because they will not bother to pay the $ 5 for the see. This could be the end for Pacquiao. If he is knocked out by Matthysse, he is likely to hang up his gloves for good. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is already predicting that Matthysse will send the 40-ish Pacquiao to retirement on July 14th.
If the fight was on regular ESPN, then it would be a huge number of fans who would hook up to watch it. The main event is the only fight on the map that will interest casual boxing fans, but you're not going to get many who will be willing to pay $ 5 to see it on ESPN +.
The Pacquiao vs Matthysse fight card will debut on ESPN + at 9:00 pm. ET / 6: 00 pm PT. Pacquiao and Matthysse will fight later in the evening at 23:00. AND.
Pacquiao will not make his longtime coach Freddie Roach work for Matthysse's fight because he has been replaced by his former assistant Buboy Fernandez. It was a strange move on the part of Pacquiao, because it does not make sense for him to throw Roach in favor of his assistant. Pacquiao has the means to hire a quality coach to help him instead of using his help Fernandez, who does not have the same kind of context. This could end up turning against Pacquiao if he gave the wrong corner instructions and loses the fight. Buboy looked lost in Pacquiao 's turn in his last fight against Jeff Horn last year in Brisbane, Australia. Pacquiao lost that fight by a 12-round unanimous decision after being thoroughly mistreated by the 29-year-old Australian. Pacquiao will fight for the first time since then when he enters the ring to face Matthysse.
Matthysse, 35 (39-4, 36 KOs), will defend his WBA World welterweight title against former eight-division world champion Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KO ) July 15 in Malaysia. The fight will be presented in the United States on July 14th. The bout will be held at the Axiata Arena in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It's late in the game for Pacquiao, 39, to defend a world title. For his part, he did nothing to deserve this time against Matthysse unless he counted his last fight and sat outside the ring for a year to win the title. Pacquiao certainly does not deserve to fight for a world title
"I'm very happy that all my fans in America have a chance to watch my next fight on ESPN +, and I'm looking forward to putting on a show , " Pacquiao said via ESPN.com. "Matthysse is a great opponent, I train with all my heart because I want to become a champion again."
As I mentioned, I do not know how many fans American boxing will take the trouble to pay the $ 5 to see the fight on ESPN +. For many American fans, they are reluctant to start paying $ 5 a month to watch fights on ESPN + while many of them are already paying nearly $ 200 a month for their cable bills. When you add $ 5 more to see the streaming fights on ESPN +, I see that this is not something that fans are interested in doing in large numbers right now. A problem that causes a lot of boxing fans to not want to buy the ESPN + app is the restricted lens of the fights that they can watch on the network. Many of the best fighters are not featured on ESPN + like Gennady Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. The fighters that boxing fans end up seeing are guys like Vasyl Lomachenko, Gilberto's Zurdo & # 39; Ramirez, José Ramirez, Alex Saucedo and Terence Crawford. Most of these guys are usually sorted gently by Top Rank, so this is not convincing for a lot of fans to buy ESPN +. There must be better fights for fans to pay $ 5 more for boxing. Paying extra for a premium channel is worth it for some fans, as it allows them to see the latest movies on HBO and Showtime. It's worth it for fans to pay extra for any of these networks.
Matthysse is not the same fighter as he once was, but he is still a huge puncher and more than powerful enough to eliminate the 39-year-old Pacquiao he's can connect with his shots. Pacquiao is no longer the elusive fighter that he once was during his best years, which means that Matthysse should have little trouble landing his big shots on him. Pacquiao is still a good fighter, but his chin is vulnerable and he has always had problems getting shots. At this point, Matthysse is already aware that Pacquiao can be hurt by body shots, so you can expect to fetch the body of the Filipino star on July 14th.
Matthysse recently won his 147lbs secondary title on the 27th stopping the highly rated # 1 Tewa Kiram in the 8th round. Matthysse made the little Kiram look better than it actually was, as it was a guy who would probably have been eliminated in the first round by Errol Spence Jr. Matthysse, 5 "6 ½ ", struggled with Kiram's height, reach and jab until he took the fight and knocked him out in the 8th. Shortly after the bout, Pacquiao staged a fight against Matthysse: Pacquiao could have gone after a title shot against IBF Welterweight Champion Errol Spence, but instead chose to fight Matthysse's most vulnerable champion
The initial plan was that Pacquiao vs. Matthysse be retransmitted on ESPN pay-per-voew However, Manny Pacquiao Promotions missed the deadlines for PPV, which resulted in the transfer of the fight to ESPN + Promoters promoters of Pacquiao Top Rank are in charge of the US distribution of the fight Pacquiao-Matthysse It would have been interesting to see how many PPVs would buy the fight Pacquiao vs. Matthysse would have generated if she had ended up on ESPN PPV rather than on ESPN +. It is unlikely that too many boxing fans were eager to dig deep in their pockets to find the money to see Pacquiao, 39, inactive, come out of a loss for Jeff Horn and set to foot one year to face Mattysse on ESPN PPV. It's not as if the undercard of the Pacquiao-Matthysse card was filled with talent. It is essentially a skeletal crew of a little-known opposition paired with equally obscure opponents. There are no notable names in the overall undercard Matthysse vs. Pacquiao that would attract the interest of US boxing fans to buy the card on ESPN PPV if it had ended up to be sold to fans.
Putting the bout Pacquiao vs. Matthysse on ESPN + will spark the interest of boxing fans enough to get them to pay the $ 5 to see the fight but it's still very, very unlikely that fans will do it in large number. This is not a fight good enough for fans to want to get off $ 5 to see it. The fight is way too late in the careers of both fighters so that it attracts a lot of fans to buy it on ESPN +. If the contest had taken place six years ago before Matthysse's loss to Danny Garcia, there would have been some fans ready to buy it à la carte, but certainly not now. You can argue that the Pacquiao vs. Mathysse fight should be shown on regular ESPN so that fans can easily see it without them having to jump into hoops of ESPN + application purchase.
On the undercard of Pacquiao vs. Matthysse, little-known Jhack Tepora (21-0, 16 KOs) will fight Edivaldo "Indio" Ortega (26-1-1, 12 KOs) for the interim featherweight title in the combat co-function. Also on the map, Moruti Mthalane (35-2, 24 KOs) defeated Muhammad Waseem (8-0, 6 KOs) in a fight for the inventive flyweight title IBF. Unfortunately, none of these four fighters is known enough to elicit the interest of the American boxing public to want to buy Pacquiao vs. Matthysse's bout on ESPN +. There is not much on the undercard Matthysse vs. Pacquiao to make fans want to pay for the $ 5 to get the ESPN + app. Golden Boy should have volunteered for his famous social media player, Ryan Garcia, to fight on the undercard. Garcia would have attracted fans to pay to see the map with his presence on social media.
In a more appealing bout, WBC interim lightweight welterweight champion Regis Prograis (21-0, 18 KOs) will defend his title against undefeated Argentine Juan Jose Velasco (20-0, 12 KOs) on regular ESPN at 7:00 pm ET. Do not be surprised if the Prograis vs Velasco fight brings better scores than the Pacquiao-Matthysse fight. Prograis is young, talented, relevant and active in his career. Pacquiao is older, passes his best and gets out of a long layoff. Prograis will have a quick "W" on Velasco before entering the World Boxing Super Series tournament in the fall. For boxing fans who plug in to see Prograis' fight on July 14, they will have a glimpse of the likely winner of the 140-pound WBSS tournament. On the undercard of the Prograis vs Velasco bout, light promising Teofimo Lopez (9-0, 7 KOs) will face William Silva (25-1, 14 KOs) in a 10-round bout.
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