Pacquiao Damn Fine At 39, Stops Matthysse; Team Crawford Calls Out Pacman

He looked pretty damn fine for 39, didn’t he?

Manny Pacquiao brushed off that dirt that his detractors threw on him, as they looked to bury him coming into his Saturday night fight against Lucas Matthysse, in Malaysia, and he threw some old-school style Pacman heat at the Argentine.

Three times, Lucas went down, and in round seven, it was all she wrote for the 35 year old. Ref Kenny Bayless called a halt to the proceedings, and the engines of speculation began, as Manny celebrated his 60th win by calling out props to President Duterte, in the arena, watching the Senator claim his first stoppage win since 2009.

A look at the numbers is pretty stark. Manny wasn't real busy and Lucas wasn't busy in the least. Is he all done? His body language and the way he reacted to some shots that didn't like Shavers-ish suggest maybe his heart isn't fully in this most dangerous game…

But, back to the brighter side…was it the Buboy effect? Did Manny train harder…or not as hard, and thus smarter, not harder? Did he need a change of scenery and supporting cast? Was the mobility challenged Matthysse simply the perfect foe at the right time?

It may be immaterial, as the Manny Is Back pack will be pushing Pacman to engage in a meaningful tango in his next outing. His earning potential leaped by a few million with this W…and really, if the still dangerous Machine had dropped and stopped Manny, his earning power would have dropped to a range he'd not known since the early 2000s…

Any ideas on who should glove up with the Senator, who didn’t offer any ideas on who he’d fight next in his post fight chat in ring, or commit to fighting agains this year?

One crew who raised their hand to volunteer for duty is the Terence Crawford camp. Trainer Brian McIntyre answered thusly when I asked for his take on the Manny victory, which ran on the ESPN+ app.

“Fight Crawford for the big money fight,” McIntyre stated.

He did look good, eh?

“He looked good enough to give Crawford problems,” said the trainer who did analysis duty on the ESPN+ call from New Orleans hours earlier, showing that he’s learned more than a bit from the sagacious deal-maker Bob Arum. Top Rank worked to land a platform home for this fight and we shall see what Manny chooses to do moving forward, after doing this event as a Manny Pacquiao promotion. “Let's go! Put it out there! We want Pac-Shit!”

For what some folks billed as the last call, after they dug a ditch to hurl his vocational coffin in, this was a most successful outcome, from a pugilistic standpoint.