Terence Crawford called to be Manny Pacquiao’s final opponent after destroying his training partner

Terence Crawford called to fight Manny Pacquiao in what was believed to be his final fight

While his comeback has encountered some issues, Manny Pacquiao plans to continue fighting at 46 years old.

‘PacMan’ has taken some significant time off in recent years, with a four year break between his loss to Yordenis Ugas and his comeback against Mario Barrios earlier this year.

Pacquiao’s loss to Floyd Mayweather in May of 2015 led to talks about the Filipino legend making the walk one more time before ending his remarkable career.

He may have gone on to compete eight more times after the Mayweather clash, but there was one opponent that was particularly keen on being his final foe.

On this day in 2015 (October 24), Terence Crawford produced his first defense of the WBO light welterweight title by stopping Dierry Jean in the tenth round.

Jean, who had trained alongside Pacquiao before the Mayweather matchup finally happened, was no match for ‘Bud’ and was dropped twice before the referee had seen enough.

During his post-fight interview inside the ring, Crawford told both his and Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, to make the bout happen, with a date of April 9 being in discussion.

Why didn’t Terence Crawford get to fight Manny Pacquiao?

As is often the case with big boxing matches that didn’t happen, Terence Crawford and Manny Pacquiao and their teams have differing opinions on why they didn’t fight.

The notion that ‘PacMan’ simply wasn’t interested in the matchup has been disputed by Pacquiao, though his coach did express some concerns about the fight.

Crawford was joined by Lucas Matthysse, Kell Brook, and Amir Khan as the potential opponents that were linked to Pacquiao’s April 2026 return.

In the end, he completed his trilogy with Timothy Bradley by beating the man that controversially won a split decision against him in 2012 for a second time.