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Manny Pacquaio lost by unanimous decision to Yordenis Ugas during the WBA Welterweight Championship in the early hours of Saturday.
Manny Pacquiao lost on his return to the ring after a two-year absence as Cuba’s Yordenis Ugas upset the odds to win by unanimous decision, retaining his WBA (super) welterweight title.
Ugas was brought on as a replacement on the 10th of August for the Las Vegas fight to replace the injured Errol Spence Jr.
This was Manny Pacquiao’s first bout since beating Keith Thurman for the WBA welterweight title in July 2019.
The legend said after the match: “In the future, you may not see Manny Pacquiao fight in the ring,”
Manny Pacquiao, 42, also said that he was “thinking about retirement” and he was “60-40” in favour of quitting.
The eight-division world champion now has a record of 62 wins, eight defeats and two draws.
The legend has this to say about his loss: “That’s boxing. “I had a hard time in the ring making adjustments. My legs were tight. I’m sorry I lost tonight, but I did my best.”
Pacquiao, who is a serving politician in his native Philippines, was stripped of the WBA title in January because of inactivity.
Ugas beat Abel Ramos for the vacant WBA regular welterweight title in September 2020 before being elevated to WBA super champion after Pacquiao was stripped of the belt.
The 35-year-old had been preparing to make his first title defence against Fabian Maidana but was promoted from the undercard to face Pacquiao.
Ugas dominated with his jab and clean punching to win on all three cards – 115-113, 116-112 and 116-112 – at the T-Mobile Arena.
“I’m very excited but most of all, I want to thank Manny Pacquiao for giving me this opportunity in the ring today,” said Ugas, who now has a record of 27 wins and four defeats.
“We only had two weeks of training but I listened to my corner and it all worked out.
“I told you I am the champion of the WBA and I showed it tonight. A lot of respect for [Pacquiao], but I won the fight.”
Manny Pacquaio’s Impressive Legacy
The records that Manny Pacquiao has amassed are jaw-dropping and almost unbelievable, yet they do not do justice to the legacy that he is leaving behind.
There will never be another ‘Pacman’, a fighter of such genius and such warmth who transcended boundaries.
The thing about Manny Pacquiao is that, for all his in-ring greatness and ferocity, he wasn’t perfect. And he did it with a smile.
Everybody has a story, a favourite memory. His dog ‘Pacman’.
His singing. The face-offs where he bursts out laughing. The hilarious Scottish accent.
The darts match with Ricky Hatton in a Manchester pub, with a grin stronger than the beer on tap, is surely a highlight.
Not long after, he thrashed Hatton in two rounds in a peak performance of aplomb and bombast.
Pacquiao made people laugh, then he made people sit on the edge of their seats when he became a whirlwind of electric punches.
He is not the first fighter to combine those traits, but for the past 20 years, there has been nobody better at it.
Suddenly, the smile became forced when, on Saturday night, Pacquiao lost a unanimous decision to Yordenis Ugas in a WBA welterweight title fight in Las Vegas.
It is likely the last time we will see him in the ring as he gears up to run for the presidency of the Philippines.
“I don’t know,” he said but it looked, and feels, inevitable that a once-in-a-lifetime career has ended.
Pacquiao is now 42 and was returning from a two-year absence. Although he brilliantly ended Keith Thurman’s unbeaten record and title reign as a 40-year-old.
The most recent and older version of Pacquiao was a ghost of the lightning-quick and viciously powerful puncher of most of the past two decades.
He was due to fight Errol Spence Jr, the pound-for-pound feted IBF and WBC champion, who withdrew injured but just by signing his name on the dotted line for such a dangerous fight at this stage of his career is why Pacquiao must be cherished.
In the end, it was perhaps a relief that he wasn’t sharing a ring with the brilliant Spence Jr.
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His Humble Beginning
Pacquiao was raised in abject poverty in General Santos City underlined by his father killing and eating their pet dog.
He ran away from home, heartbroken, and lived on the streets in Manila selling doughnuts to make some money.
From hopeless desperation, he became one of the biggest sports superstars in America.
It is a journey the scale of which is impossible to truly comprehend, but it is made more otherworldly when you consider that no Asian sportsperson had transcended the US sports market as Pacquiao did.
It was unheard of for a non-American or Hispanic boxer or sportsperson to achieve the mainstream recognition that he did.
All the while with a smile on his face, professing his love of basketball even though, at 5’5”, he could not slam dunk. No matter.
His partnership with Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach is now one of boxing’s most successful.
Roach welcomed a teenage kid to his Wild Card gym 20 years ago.
He now suffers from Parkinson’s disease but Pacquiao is by his side, together with where they belong, even if this wonderfully odd relationship was threatened in 2017. Pacquiao’s entourage was growing and was vocal.
Roach worried that boxing and politics did not mix. They did not speak for a long time but reunited, just Manny and Freddie, over a handshake with no need for a paper contract.
Pacquiao had an entire career before arriving in the US in 2001 for his 35th fight against Lehlo Ledwaba, the opponent whose recent death he paid tribute to.
In those early years, he was knocked out twice before anybody had ever heard his name.
The first to do it, Rustico Torrecampo, is the stuff of folklore because he became a fugitive wanted for murder.
Pacquiao has aided his old adversary’s attempts to piece his life back together over the years.
His trio of stoppage victories inside a 12-month span over Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto must rank among the best year-long periods of the modern era, and shot Pacquiao to superstardom.
“The second-biggest market in the US is the Hispanic market,” explains MP Promotions president Sean Gibbons.
“To this day, the second-biggest fighter in Mexico behind Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez is Pacquiao. That’s because he beat all their guys.”
Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez, Erik Morales; Pacquiao waged war with eight consecutive Mexican opponents at one point. It was a golden generation, looking back now.
Even when losses crept in, he gamely recovered. He put right the Timothy Bradley split decision.
He regained his footing from a horrific KO by Marquez to continue battling at the sharp end. He has lost eights times.
Even the latest iteration of Pacquiao, in his late-30s and early-40s, lost controversially on the scorecards to Jeff Horn in Australia.
He still came back to impressively end Keith Thurman’s title reign and undefeated record.
The one result that will keep Pacquiao awake at night is the loss to Floyd Mayweather, a generation-defining fight that became one-sided in his eternal rival’s favour.
That humbling will never escape Pacquiao.
“Manny’s overall body of work blows away what Mayweather accomplished,” his ally Gibbons has claimed. It is an argument that will rage for years to come.
Mayweather’s perfect 50-0 record and the total absence of any obvious struggle in his career marks him out as an utterly unique wizard of the ring.
It also, alongside his ‘Money’ moniker, isolates him from the real-world understanding of his admirers.
The grinning Pacquiao has no such problem.
He captured hearts in a way that Mayweather never did. And although their defining match-up went Mayweather’s way, something far more profound will always be Pacquiao’s.
That is a legacy that Mayweather’s money cannot buy.
His Foray into Politics
The man was known to those closest to him as The Senator now likely has a future in “a more difficult world than boxing”, as he calls it, as he eyes the President’s office in the Philippines.
Some of his views have previously been criticised and will come under the microscope again.
Elections are in May 2022 and, we understand that he can no longer juggle boxing and politics, as he has done for more than 10 years if he decides to run for the top job.
“I want to help the people,” he said on Saturday night about those aspirations.
If that means bringing a glorious in-ring career to an end, the timing feels right.
