Manny Pacquiao has been elected to boxing’s Hall of Fame. And the sun will rise in the East.
There was never a doubt. The only question was when he would stop fighting and become eligible. On June 8, in Canastota, N.Y., Pacquiao will be honored by a sport that never knew what a hit it had when it allowed him into a ring 26 years ago. Before he finally got out and announced his retirement, he had competed from 108 pounds — when he was a street urchin in the Philippines trying to scrape together money for food for his family — to 154 pounds. He won titles in eight weight classeHe is 46 now, still 5-foot 5-inches, still close to fighting weight and still a lefty fireplug. He finished with a pro record of 62-8-2, including 39 knockouts. As an amateur, he went 60-4. That’s a lot of hitting, and a lot of getting hit. Yet as recently as a year ago, he was trying to drum up a match against Mario Barrios, a decent fighter. That the fight never happened might be proof that God is a boxing fan.
For those of us observing all this over the years, enough was enough in July 2019 when, at age 40, Pacquiao took on a younger, stronger Keith Thurman and won the World Boxing Assn. super welterweight title. Ballet dancers don’t last till they are 40, much less somebody getting hit in the head for more than two decades.
Manny Pacquiao, right, throws a punch at Keith Thurman during their welterweight fight in Las Vegas in July 2019. Manny Pacquiao, right, throws a punch at Keith Thurman during their welterweight fight in Las Vegas in July 2019. (John Locher / Associated Press) The Thurman fight was under the bright lights of the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, where Pacquiao had made his boxing home. At various times there, he had caught the Brit Ricky Hatton with one of the prettiest KO punches ever, had effectively ended Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy career, had fought a lucrative trilogy with Tim Bradley, had been knocked out so convincingly by Juan Manuel Marquez that many at ringside thought he was dead and had lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the largest-grossing fight in history.
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight on May 2, 2015, sold 4.6 million pay-per-views, sold 10,000 tickets at $10 each for the weigh-in (men standing in their underwear on a scale), attracted $100 million in legal Vegas wagers and forced the partial closure of the private-plane area of McCarran airport because of all the celebrity traffic.
In Pacquiao’s fight against Thurman, he connected with a body punch that sent Thurman to the canvas. Thurman said later that that body punch had been so lethal that he had to take out his mouthguard so he could breathe again. Pacquiao knocked Thurman down again later, then Thurman overcame whatever empathy he had for the elderly and made it a great fight. But Pacquiao had gotten too far ahead and won with a split decision.s. Nobody else has done that.
