The Manny Pacquiao Retirement Tour stops in Brisbane on Sunday when the once-great boxer defends his WBO welterweight title against PE teacher turned fighter Jeff Horn.
When it was announced that the 38-year-old boxer would next fight Horn, a 16-0-1 fighter seemingly plucked from obscurity, the boxing community was left scratching its head.
On the surface, it was a strange choice. Horn gained a little notoriety by beating up the ghosts of past-their-prime fighters Ali Funeka and Randall Bailey in 2016 but has yet to win a fight that would convince anyone outside of his immediate friends and family that he is ready to slay the Filipino dragon.
“The guy (Horn) is terrible,” Yahoo Sports boxing columnist Kevin Iole bluntly told the Filipino press. “Why are you fighting Jeff Horn? Just a joke.”
Pacquiao has ten million good reasons to fight Horn. The fighter will pocket a seven-digit sum for the fight – more than 20 times the purse of Horn – making it a classic low-risk, high-reward fight for the future Hall of Famer.
And chances are, this won’t be the last time the Freddie Roach-trained puncher fights an unknown in a foreign country.
“I think Manny Pacquiao is more than just a boxer because he is representing the Philippines,” promoter Bob Arum told The Manila Times. “It’s good for him to fight in places around the world same way Muhammad Ali fought so many fights outside of the United States.”
“That’s what I want to do with the last period of Manny’s career,” he continued. “I want him to be known as a worldwide fighter.”
(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
If you can read between the lines, Arum is saying that for the right price he is willing to waste the final matches of Pacquiao’s career, sending him to fight nobodies in smaller markets.
That wouldn’t hurt Pacquaio’s legacy. He’s the only man to hold titles in eight separate weight classes and The Fighter of the Decade during the aughts, according to boxing’s bible, The Ring Magazine. An international can-crushing tour in the dying stages of his career won’t take that away from him.
It will, however, hurt boxing. In the fight game, you kill your heroes. It’s a cruel yet crucial cycle that allows the young to replace the old on the mountaintop.
Both Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather became box office attractions by disposing of Oscar De La Hoya, who became a star by taking out Julio Cesar Chavez a generation earlier.
Boxing’s next band of standard bearers are already here, ready to become idols in their own right, but so far have been robbed of the opportunity to write their name into the history books.
Pacquiao’s stablemate Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford could become the new face of Top Rank Promotions. Exciting champions Keith Thurman and Errol Spence Jr could become first-ballot Hall of Famers.
These fighters are building their own empire without Mayweather or Pacquiao’s name on their resume but history suggests they will struggle to become crossover stars without testing their skills against the old guard.
Even in his diminished form, Pacquaio can still swat away pretenders. Only the truly great fighters will be able to catch ‘Pac-Man’.
The phonies wouldn’t be able to land a meaningful punch on Mayweather, either. It will take a special fighter to put an end to the previous era with a single punch.
Of course, they won’t get a chance to land that punch if Mayweather and Pacquaio spend their final days in the ring beating up school teachers and MMA fighters.
A bloodied Tim Tszyu has been cruelly denied in his quest to emulate his legendary father Kostya and become a unified world boxing champion…
Liam Wilson has suffered further heartbreak in Arizona, the Australian boxer losing his super-featherweight world-title fight against Mexican Oscar Valdez. In front of a…
Tim Tszyu has the chance to emulate his legendary father as a unified world boxing champion after the stakes were dramatically raised for his…
Australia's Alexander Volkanovski has lost his UFC featherweight title to Ilia Topuria, with the Spaniard scoring a stunning second round knockout in the main…
Jason Moloney has survived an enthralling 12-round world title defence against Saul Sanchez in Canada, opening the door to a blockbuster unification fight in…
Conor McGregor says he's returning to the UFC for a fight against Michael Chandler on June 29 in Las Vegas, calling it the "greatest…
