A certain UFC champion’s name kept coming up when Manny Pacquiao hinted at his next opponent

That was inevitable.

Darragh Murphy

A certain UFC champion’s name kept coming up when Manny Pacquiao hinted at his next opponent

Manny Pacquiao is letting his fans pick the opponent for his first fight of 2017.

The WBO welterweight champion has narrowed down his next potential opponent to four men, and is asking his Twitter followers to select the most exciting option for the bout, which is expected to take place in the United Arab Emirates.

The four options for Pacquiao are Amir Khan, Jeff Horn, Terence Crawford and Kell Brook, and, at the time of writing, Khan is currently streets ahead in the voting.

https://twitter.com/mannypacquiao/status/830845509203922944

One interesting element of the poll is the distinct absence of Floyd Mayweather’s name.

Billed as ‘The Fight of the Century’, the initial meeting of Mayweather and Pacquiao in 2015 was ultimately a let-down in the eyes of many fight fans but the bout still became the biggest selling pay-per-view in history and a rematch would remain intriguing enough for viewers to splash out on it.

Another striking result of Pacquiao’s decision to gauge the public interest in his next opponent is the fact that the same name – also not included on the list – kept cropping up in the responses.

Ever since UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor was granted a boxing licence in the state of California, talk has been rife that a boxing debut against Mayweather was close to an inevitability.

But Pacquiao recently threw his hat in the ring to welcome ‘The Notorious’ to the squared circle for what would be one of the most viewed combat sports spectacles of all time.

One major stumbling block in somehow seeing McGregor meet Pacquiao is the association of the latter to promoter Bob Arum, which has since inspired UFC president Dana White to publicly announce that he had no interest in co-promoting with that team.

And while McGregor’s professional boxing debut still seems a world away, that didn’t prevent eager fight fans dropping the Irishman’s name into the discussion.