Manny Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas: Top Storylines Surrounding Title Fight

Boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao challenges Jessie Vargas for the WBO Welterweight Championship Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on Top Rank pay-per-view.

It will be the Filipino sensation's first fight off HBO in years.

Pacquiao briefly retired following his rubber match win over Timothy Bradley in April.

Few believed it would stick, even with a new job as a senator in his native Philippines, while lucrative matchups, including one that boxing fans are tired of hearing about, remained on the table.

But more on that later.

He's a heavy favorite to once again claim a share of the 147-pound title in a fight most view as underwhelming to say the least. 

Vargas has come back strong from a June 2015 loss to Bradley where he was dominated for all but the 10 or so closing seconds of the final round. He came back to batter highly rated Sadam Ali and capture a vacant welterweight title in March.

That win—and belt—earned him the biggest fight of his career, but he's a big underdog.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, let's take a look at the hottest storylines surrounding Pacquiao vs. Vargas!

Will It Be Competitive?

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Will the fight be competitive is the $64,000 question.

We always say that there are levels to this boxing thing, and everything we know and have seen indicates that Pacquiao, even 10 years older than his foe, operates several pegs above Vargas on the ladder. There's really no doubt on that measure.

It's not that Vargas is a bad fighter.

In fact, he's a decent one. 

Both The Ring Magazine and ESPN.com rate him as the No. 8 fighter in the division, and while that may seem kind of low for this type of event, pretty much everyone above him was unattainable for this fight.

Vargas' biggest flaw is that he's good.

He's just not elite, even if he does possess a significant weapon in his big right hand. It nearly knocked out Bradley in the closing seconds and led him to the world title that landed him here.

But Pacquiao is elite. 

Still.

He showed against Bradley in April that he can still channel some of that inner fire that made him the sport's can't-miss attraction for much of his career by scoring the only knockdowns of the three-fight series. He left zero doubt, as he had in the prior two fights, and emphatically stamped the rivalry.

We all hope for a good scrap Saturday night, but barring the Pac-Man suddenly getting old overnight or Vargas being much better than advertised, it doesn't seem like a good wager if you're the betting type.

Can Pacquiao Still Be a Top P4P Fighter?

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Pacquiao's retirement didn't last long.

In fact, you probably shouldn't even refer to it as an official retirement. The timeline for his fight with Vargas is virtually identical to what it would have been had he just continued on business as usual after his April fight and never said the word "retired." 

Most seem to believe a victory over Vargas is a foregone conclusion for the Filipino star, and the bigger question revolves around whether he'll continue on and how good he'll look as he creeps toward his 38th birthday.

That will come in December.

Boxing needs big stars to thrive. 

Canelo Alvarez has ascended to the mantle that was vacated when Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired, but his handling of the top job has produced a spotty record. Beyond him are plenty of excellent fighters—Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev, Roman Gonzalez, etc.—but little in the way of transcendent stars. 

At least they aren't there quite yet.

Pacquiao is still a star, and he's still a top pound-for-pound attraction. 

That we know.

What we don't know is how many fans will tune in to see him.

Will the Fans Care?

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Boxing fans have been raked over the coals a bit this year when it comes to PPV.

Terence Crawford battered Viktor Postol on PPV this summer to unify the 140-pound division in a fight that had no business being on a pay platform—not because the fighters weren't good enough, but because it takes a long time to build those types of stars, and neither man was there yet.

So many people likely missed the best performance of Crawford's career. That's a shame for him.

Canelo's 154-pound title win over Liam Smith in September likewise had no place being anywhere but on regular HBO.

The network, which has endured a down year, elected to pass on producing this PPV event, mostly because it will be showcasing the huge light heavyweight showdown between Kovalev and Ward two weeks later. 

HBO wasn't willing to split up its resources into producing two competing events so close together, especially when the second is the biggest fight in the sport this year and Pacquiao vs. Vargas seems to have little public demand or hype.

That opened the door for Top Rank to produce the event, something that Arum believes provides an interesting test case for whether promoters really need big networks (and the associated slice of the pie they give up to them) to distribute PPV events, per Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.

It's an interesting situation.

Since no replay of the fight will be available the following week on HBO, as is usually the case, Arum believes that fact could drive sales. He thinks that might give fans additional incentive to fork over the cash.

We'll see, since the hype over this fight seems minimal.

What Next for Pacquiao?

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Pacquiao had to be precise in choosing a date for this fight due to his senate schedule in the Philippines. He wasn't willing to allow training and all the associated responsibilities of fighting to interfere with his job requirements at home. 

The question is whether this is his next fight or his last fight.

Again.

A second retirement in 2016 doesn't seem out of the question.

Pacquiao has been noncommittal about his post-fight future in the sport, per Mitch Abramson of Ring TV.

"I don’t know yet,” Pacquiao said of fighting on, per Abramsom. “My focus is Nov. 5. My focus is to my job and I’m only thinking about Nov. 5. I don’t know yet. One at a time. We can’t say yet right now."

A lot of factors are at play here.

You'd have to expect that if Pacquiao looks good and the fight does decent at the box office—thus making the fighter and his team a good chunk of coin—that the chances of a return would dramatically increase. 

But what if it bombs?

What if Pacquiao looks bad or even loses?

The latter would seem to kill any possibility of what could come next—at least in the money counter's ideal world—and might force his hand into retirement for good. 

Is a Floyd Mayweather Rematch a Possibility?

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We're going to talk about it until it happens or until both men are old and gray.

Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was the most hyped prizefight in the history of boxing.

Nothing else even comes remotely close in comparison to the number of words written and spoken over nearly a decade about a contest between two of the biggest stars in the history of the sweet science. 

And it proved to be a smashing commercial success with over 4.4 million people buying on PPV and an estimated half-billion dollars in total revenue generated. 

The numbers were literally insane.

Too bad the fight stunk out the joint and left many feeling cheated, disillusioned and disenchanted. 

So let's do it again?

Mayweather is currently retired, and Pacquiao is not willing to say what will happen after Saturday night, but the two men will forever be linked. The idea of a rematch will not go away. No matter how much you wish it.

Even if a redux produces half as much cash as the first fight, then it's still light-years ahead of any other fight that could be made in the sport today or the foreseeable future.

You're probably rolling your eyes back into your head right now and swearing that you won't be suckered again, but on fight night, we both know you'd press the button.

And that's why everyone will continue talking about it.