This weekend, Manny Pacquiao did what 30 previous opponents couldn?t do; defeat Keith Thurman.
Boxing?s only eight-division world champion, Senator Manny ?PacMan? Pacquiao dropped Keith ?One Time? Thurman in round one and won a close split decision to earn a welterweight world title. The win made Pacquiao the oldest welterweight champion in boxing history.
The fight was a main event of a Premier Boxing Champions on FOX Sports Pay-Per-View event onSaturday night from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
The sell-out crowd of 14,356 got treated to great action from the start, as an exciting first round was capped off by Pacquiao dropping Thurman for the first time in his career with a straight right hand late in the round.
Pacquiao had a large advantage in jabs landed, connecting on 82 to Thurman?s 18. The 192 power punches landed by Thurman was the most in 43 Pacquiao fights that CompuBox has tracked. Round-by-round, the two fighters were only separated by more than five landed punches in rounds two, seven and nine.
After 12 rounds, the judges reached a split decision, with one judge scoring the fight 114-113 for Thurman, overruled by two judges scoring it 115-112 for Pacquiao, who captured the WBA Welterweight World Championship at 40-years-old. The Best Ever?
Ironically, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. was in attendance and a co-promoter of the fight.
The two have flirted with a rematch of their now historic 2015 matchup that left Mayweather the victor of a unanimous decision.
