There is increasing smoke around the idea of a Manny Pacquiao vs Ryan Garcia fight.
Last Tuesday, Garcia was a guest on “Jalen & Jacoby” and the idea was brought up. Garcia didn’t say Pacquiao’s name, but didn’t deny it when asked directly, after he said he might not fight Gervonta Davis next, as he had a bigger fight in negotiations.
“I have a potential huge, bigger fight than (Davis),” Garcia said. “I might put him off to the side. I’m still gonna fight him. I wouldn’t not fight him unless it was an even bigger opportunity, but I cannot say anything right now, so I’m just gonna keep it that.”
Late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning, however you want to put it), it was reported that there were in fact legitimate talks between the Pacquiao and Garcia camps. That came after Conor McGregor was knocked out at UFC 257, which would seem to at least temporarily kill the idea of a Pacquiao-McGregor fight, which had still been Manny’s No. 1 focus.
Now, Garcia is indicating that the fight is a done deal, at least on social media. He posted a fan-made poster and gave his thoughts, writing, “A dream turned reality. It’s an honor to share the Ring with Manny Pacquiao. I will always respect what you did in and out the ring. Here’s to the best man winning.”
Now, a few things to note, and these are important:
- Again, that’s not an official poster. It’s fan-made. It’s a nice poster. Dude makes lots of nice posters. They’re neat.
- There has been no official announcement.
- There have been no new reports or rumors, even.
- Pacquiao’s social media has said nothing about it, for whatever that’s worth.
- If you’ve followed him, particularly recently, Garcia is not always as internet savvy as you might expect of a 22-year-old internet phenomenon so there’s at least a small chance he jumped the gun thinking this was a real poster.
So we’ll see what happens, but I’d also note that if Garcia (21-0, 18 KO) didn’t have reason to believe that the deal with Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KO) was close to done, he probably wouldn’t even be able to be fooled, if that’s what happened here. Again, there’s a lot of smoke here. And usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire.