By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Their promoter says it’s possible for Manny Pacquiao and Terence Crawford to finally fight in November.

Crawford won’t even allow himself to think about it. The much-discussed fight against the Filipino icon hasn’t come close to happening, thus Crawford won’t pay it much mind until he hears otherwise from Bob Arum or his co-managers, Cameron Dunkin and Brian McIntyre.

“I don’t even think about that fight,” said Crawford, who’ll fight Felix Diaz (19-1, 9 KOs) on May 20 at Madison Square Garden. “I never even really paid too much attention about it. Like I always said, my manager, my coach, Top Rank never came to me about a Pacquiao fight. I never talked to his people about a fight.

“So when they put [out] all those blogs and all those website [stories] about Pacquiao and Terence Crawford, I never pay attention to it because it’s bogus. It’s just people’s opinion and sometimes people’s opinions don’t matter. People can say, ‘Oh, I want this fight, I want this fight.’ But just because you want that fight, that don’t mean it’s gonna happen.”

Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KOs) will defend his WBO welterweight title against Australia’s Jeff Horn (16-0-1, 11 KOs) on July 2 in Brisbane. The undefeated Crawford concedes that a pay-per-view bout with Pacquiao would bolster his star power, but the WBC/WBO super lightweight champion won’t fault the 38-year-old Pacquiao if it’s a fight he avoids at this stage of his career.

“Anything’s possible,” Crawford said. “It’s just that I’m not focused on that. If it happens, it happens. If it don’t, it don’t. I’m still young in my career. I’ve still got a lot left in me, and he’s on the downside of his career. And if it don’t happen, so be it.

“Pacquiao earned that right to go out however he wanna go out. He done fought everybody there is to fight and took on all the big and baddest challenges there was. So I credit him and his career. He had an amazing career, and if he decides to go out with whoever he wanna go out with, he earned that right.”

Fighting Pacquiao would be the best financial opportunity of the 29-year-old Crawford’s career. That’s a significant consideration, though Crawford (30-0, 21 KOs) also accepts that if he beat Pacquiao the win would basically be recorded with an asterisk beside it.

“Yeah, the general public will [take notice],” Crawford said regarding the attention he’d receive for fighting Pacquiao. “But at the same time, the people that’s really into boxing or that write about boxing will be, ‘Oh, he was on his downside. Well, you didn’t fight him in his prime.’ ”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.