Pac didn't need Ugas. Pac needed Spence. Pac losing to Ugas harmed his career more than if he lost to Spence.
The plan from the beginning of PBC in 2015 was to showcase welterweights and try to make one or more of them PPV stars like Floyd Mayweather. Al Haymon has a thing for welterweights. So he promoted as many as he could, built them up and then, as they made names for themselves, slowly began pitting them against each other. As things shook out, Errol Spence and Keith Thurman were the two who were turning up undefeated. Spence was the guy they picked as the 'star' years ago. Who would be his chief rival was open to question. Thurman ended up beating both Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter to come out on top as the guy they were going to promote as his chief rival. This was all coming to a head in 2019 when Spence and Thurman signed to fight two "name" opponents in Mikey Garcia and Manny Pac in PPV showcases. These two bouts were intended to be the final launch to create a PPV 'Superfight' (or a series of them) featuring the two undefeated in-house fighters - Spence and Thurman. Then Thurman was surprisingly beaten by the elderly Pac. And Spence got into his automobile accident. Which derailed everything and could've easily resulted in Spence's death. That was the low point for Hayman's master plan. Since then, and COVID, they have kind of been "winging it." Spence wanted a good test after the accident and fought Danny Garcia. When it looked like Manny had signed with another outfit, they looked at Spence vs. Ugas, who was another welterweight Haymon heaped on the stockpile he had. But then they got Pac back, so the plan was to pit Spence vs. Manny. It would've likely been an easy win for Spence, but he was injured in training and needed eye surgery. That threw everything up in the air again. But they had Ugas on standby. So Manny fought Ugas and lost. With Ugas' win, the door is open now for Keith Thurman to get back in the mix. Thurman has already beaten Porter and Garcia, as has Spence. If Thurman can knock off Ugas, Haymon's plan will be back in play. So I think Thurman-Ugas is the fight Haymon will try to make next. If Crawford and Porter do fight next, and Crawford wins, things may shuffle around again. However, if Porter wins, the last big PBC Welter pairing from this initial group will be Spence-Thurman. I think it's all back to building toward Spence-Thurman. But Thurman has to beat Ugas.
When is the last time manny had big ppv numbers Sure it's a great name on the record, but he is 42 years old If spence makes it back he has the fight with bud who would annihilate this version of Pac
Spence is likely upset about this. This was his chance, his shot. Hopefully he recovers from the eye injury to 100%.
Kovalev beating Hopkins into his send-off fight could only earn 130K buys for a LHW unification against Ward, and even less for the rematch that had the controversy of the first fights result. More people definitely know Ugas is a person now, but this result isn't going to make him anymore of a star then Jeff Horn was.
Horn did pretty well for himself. He went from 200k purses to 2 million dollar purses. Ugas only received 300k fighting Porter. He is 36 so time is not on his side but he can capitalize a little form this.
