By Jamal Dicky
Who the heck is Jeff Horn?
The only Jeff Horn I know is NBA legend and Knicks coach Jeff HORNacek who played for the Utah Jazz back in the day. Apparently Manny Pacquiao is set to fight an Australian boxer by the name of Jeff Horn aka the Hornet.
This Pacquiao vs. Horn fight is beyond baffling to boxing fans. I had to look up Horn, his record is 16-0-1, 11KOs and he reminds me of a mix of Arturo Gatti and fellow Australian Daniel Geale from the video footage I’ve seen of him.
I also noticed is he is an awkward type of boxer with some jerky movement that is hard to time, but he has gotten dropped several times in his career. He has heart and will come forward on Manny which plays into the Pacman’s game. The only real advantages Horn has over Pacquiao is the size and youth, he is younger 28 to Pac’s 38 and much bigger at 5 foot 9 while Pacman is only 5 foot 6. Experience will be the key in this fight, and Pac has faced many bigger foes and beat them with ease. The only way I see Manny lose this fight is if he aged horrible overnight.
I believe Pacquiao and his team decided on fighting Horn because they knew unbeaten American Terence Crawford would beat him handily and is too risky an opponent. Pacquiao’s manager Micheal Koncz demanded 20 million guaranteed for Crawford, basically pricing themselves out of the fight because Pacquiao doesn’t do half the numbers he used too on Pay-Per-View and Crawford’s PPV debut was a huge failure.
Another reason for Horn being picked is that promoter Bob Arum has promotional stake in the Aussie, and he can milk the aging Pacquiao for every possible dime before finally disposing him against either of his young guns Crawford or Vasyl Lomachenko.
Arum plans on doing a world tour with Pacquiao, having him fight club fighters or local favorites who he can beat and make money off the ticket sales and TV rights in the area. Fighting in places like Australia, Japan, Russia, England, and Canada against local fighters hoping to draw huge crowds and revenue because Manny’s name has already lost value in the United States. The question is does Manny’s name still draw interest globally? Especially after the embarrassing subpar effort he put in against Floyd Mayweather and the unsportsmanlike injury excuses he made for his one sided loss.
