With a win over Keith Thurman last night, 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao did a few things:

1. He won the WBA welterweight title, the real one.
2. He took a 30-year-old fighter’s undefeated record and proved he can still compete at a very high level.
3. He potentially set himself up for a fight he probably can’t win at this point in his career.

Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KO) was asked in the ring after the fight if he would try to fight for a third time in 2019, following his January win over Adrien Broner and last night’s victory over Thurman. There certainly would be time, if Pacquiao were a normal boxer, even a normal superstar boxer.

But he’s not. Pacquiao is a Senator in the Philippines, and he has duties and responsibilities there that he nowadays works around in order to continue his lucrative boxing career. So no, Pacquiao won’t fight again in 2019, or at least he doesn’t intend to right now. And over the last three years, he’s kept a pretty clear schedule: he’s fought every July from 2017-19, plus the one fight in January of this year.

That could mean an early 2020 return for Pacquiao. He’ll turn 41 in December and whatever he does, we’ll hear the same questions of whether or not he’s too old, and although he won last night and proved he can still go, he’s at the age where it’s going to be a valid question before any fight he takes. Fighters “get old” suddenly quite often, and there’s no denying that Manny, good as he still is, has declined. There’s no shame in that and it’s not even a criticism — of course he has. He’s 40.

So with Manny’s next fight not coming until the calendar turns over to 2020, it’s hard to really guess what he’ll do in that outing, because boxing changes fast, and the landscape we have today might not be the one we have in three months, let alone six months or a year.

Terence Crawford

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Let’s start here just for kicks. Pacquiao’s a PBC fighter, so most likely you can count out Terence Crawford, the WBO titleholder. After last night, you can really firmly count out Crawford against any of the PBC welterweights, it seems — as everyone noticed, when the FOX production team flashed a graphic of the welterweight champions in boxing, Crawford was curiously missing. This is an insult not only to Crawford but to the intelligence of the audience, but that’s a story for another time.

Pacquiao and Crawford were under the same banner at Top Rank for years as Crawford rose onto the pound-for-pound lists, winning belts at 135, 140, and 147, and there was a lot of speculation that Crawford was the fighter Top Rank would try to pass Manny’s torch to when the time was right.

Instead, Pacquiao-Crawford never materialized and as far as I know, never even got into particularly deep discussion. Promoter Bob Arum has said he didn’t want to put Pacquiao in with “Bud” for humanitarian-type reasons, which would be awfully unusual of a promoter but isn’t entirely unbelievable. Arum and Pacquiao worked together a long time and there was obviously a bond there. Even if it meant making Crawford a bigger star with a win, maybe Arum really just didn’t want to see that fight.

Either way, as things stand now, it’s almost surely never happening, and certainly isn’t happening next.

The PBC Stars

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Most notably, IBF titleholder Errol Spence Jr and WBC titleholder Shawn Porter are officially set to meet on Sept. 28 in another pay-per-view main event. Spence (25-0, 21 KO) will be a clear favorite against Porter (30-2-1, 17 KO).

If Spence does the job as expected, we could revisit something PBC floated out in March, a Spence-Pacquiao fight. This is what I meant with No. 3 up above — Pacquiao still deserves mountains of respect in the sport, but Errol Spence Jr isn’t Keith Thurman, either. Spence isn’t a guy coming in with one dicey fight against a fringe contender in the last two years. Spence has all the looks of an elite level fighter, a big welterweight, and unquestionably in his prime.

That said, you could make a pretty good argument that Pacquiao would be the best opponent of Spence’s career, even next spring at age 41, even counting Porter and Kell Brook. The casual audience, which makes up the bulk of the audience for a Big Fight, might buy into a torch passing enough to make the matchup worth it for PBC. Pacquiao still brings eyeballs and is a much bigger star than Spence. Oscar De La Hoya looked like ass when Manny beat him in 2008, but that’s what launched Pacquiao from boxing star to boxing superstar and mainstream sports personality.

If Porter were to upset Spence, decent chance you’d get a Spence-Porter rematch, which would take them out of the Pacquiao running. But perhaps not, which could make Pacquiao-Porter — a winnable fight for Manny, probably — a real possibility.

There’s also the PBC Garcias, Danny and Mikey, no relation. Those two may or may not meet later this year. Danny got left out in the cold in this cycle of big fights at 147, with Pacquiao-Thurman and then Spence-Porter, and Mikey just doesn’t appear to be a welterweight, though beating Danny would certainly argue against that.

Danny would be an interesting fight for Pacquiao as stands right now, and Mikey would be a really attractive option for Manny if he Mikey to beat Danny, should they actually fight.

Amir Khan

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And then there’s Amir Khan, who is out there as a promotional free agent, still has some name value, and has wanted a Pacquiao fight for a long time. It’s not going to happen in Saudi Arabia in November, probably, as Khan has claimed, or claimed to claim, but it could happen next year. I know that sounds ridiculous to some of you, but Khan is — well, he’s not popular, but people pay attention to him. There is money in a Pacquiao-Khan fight, and who could truly begrudge Manny, at 41, cashing an easy check to smash his left fist through Khan’s porcelain jaw?

I Know You Don’t Want to Hear This So I’m Putting Floyd Mayweather Last

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Floyd Mayweather is 42 years old. He’ll turn 43 next February. He hasn’t had a legitimate fight since Sept. 2015, when he beat Andre Berto. I mean, his fight in Aug. 2017 with Conor McGregor was officially sanctioned and pushed Mayweather’s record to 50-0, but come on. And his exhibition with Tenshin Nasukawa was just that, an exhibition. At best.

Mayweather has no real reason to fight again, unless he needs the money, and make no mistake: no matter how bad you thought their 2015 meeting was, Mayweather-Pacquiao II would make a lot of money, even with both guys in their early 40s and long past their peaks. Mayweather fighting anyone is still worth money, and Pacquiao isn’t “anyone,” he’s still a global superstar and arguably the biggest active name in boxing today.

I don’t think the fight will ever happen, though. Despite the smug assurance of many of his critics over the years, Mayweather does not appear to be running out of money. And he’s always been a very calculating sort of guy. He made it to 50-0. He’s old. He already beat Pacquiao. There’s nothing for him to gain legacy-wise by risking it, by coming out of retirement, possibly rusty, possibly just not able to execute like he could even in his late 30s, against a similarly aged but also still active Manny Pacquiao. And if he were to need money, there are a lot of rich dudes out there who will pay the great Floyd Mayweather for more Tenshin-style exhibitions.

So if you’re someone who’d still like to see Mayweather-Pacquiao again, bad news, I don’t think you will. But it’s good news if you see the rematch as a pointless idea in any regard other than the fighters cashing monster checks.

Here’s the TL;DR version: it’s really hard right this second to guess what Manny will do next, because “next” isn’t coming for several months at least, but personally if I had to lay a bet right now, I would bet on it being one of Spence, Porter, D. Garcia, M. Garcia, or Khan. Someone could come up from 140, or something else could happen, but those would be the frontrunners.

— BAD LEFT HOOK