Reviewing The 2020 Fighter of the Decade~Manny Pacquiao

Folks, epic history in it’s creation worth repeating again and again for boxing aficionados and naysayers!

Manny Pacquiao as the Fighter of the Decade from 2000-2009, opened up 2010 with successive resounding bombshells. First he knocked his main rival, Floyd Mayweather Jr, out of his scheduled fight date of March 13th at the MGM after their fight talks evaporated over the dubious terms of drug testing. Manny then roared back with a huge flurry to debut both himself and brand new Cowboy Stadium that March 13th that established Cowboy Stadium as the premiere stadium fight in all of America. Longtime welter contenders, Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito, both of whom were ducked by Mayweather, why they had to take what was coming to Mayweather instead…Ouch City!

Here are the current Boxrec top 11 P4P fighters as of the approximate end of this decade:

1 Canelo Lightheavyweight
2 Terence Crawford welterweight
3 Gennady Golovkin middleweight
4 Errol Spence Jr welterweight
5 Vasiliy Lomachenko lightweight
6 Miguel Berchelt super featherweight
7 Callum Smith super middleweight
8 Manny Pacquiao welterweight
9 Shawn Porter welterweight
10 Deontay Wilder
11 Andy Ruiz Jr heavyweight

The Ring has most of the Boxrec top 10 in a different order including Manny, but The Big Names having fought/beat multiple P4P and/or HOF type fighter in Boxrec order are:

Canelo, 22-1-1 for the decade with 3 P4P/HOF fights, Golovkin, 21-1-1 for the decade with 2 P4P/HOF fights, Manny, 12-4 for the decade with 7 P4P/HOF fights. So while the other prime big guns compiled larger numerical wins and less losses, by P4P/HOF criteria, the sheer density of the quality of Manny’s opposition screams out.

Let’s take a closer look at Manny’s record from 2010 to 2019 while he was pulling duties as an elected Philippine Congressman and then Senator, thus making him necessarily a part time fighter for the decade. In it you will find 7 P4P/HOF fighters, 11 or more ranked contenders, 6 undefeated fighters, Zero(0) Hometown fights, and 14 Knockdowns with one Knockout. We could allow a half dozen more Knockdowns and another knockout with the Chris Algieri fight, farcically “officially” with 6 KDs where Manny was knocking him into the ropes the whole of the fight. The kid proved to be extra tough to last the distance, but it was a needless beatdown of a new contender who has struggled ever since. The cornball ref for that fight held @Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao according to Boxrec was Genaro Rodriguez, but if you click on the link another name comes up, and if you do a search, a number of identical names come up much like an Ed Smith or Tom Jones search, so no matter the ref’s true identity, for that fight that ref was a joke.

In short, Manny did not just dare to be great, he was insistent upon being great as an extension of his BWAA Fighter of the Decade 2000-2009. Manny holds the Ring P4P record of most wins, most KOs, most fights, and most years consecutively P4P ranked, 12+ years. Moreover, he will have been ranked as P4P in his 4th decade of boxing next year if he chooses to fight again, almost a certainty. I don’t see how these Ring P4P records can ever be broken, and he did it within the adversarial, litigious construct between his promoter, Bob Arum and that of Ring’s owner, Oscar de la Hoya.

At the start of 2010 Manny’s record was 50-3-2, and at the close of 2019, his record was 62-7-2. That translates to 16 fights resulting in a 12-4 record during the decade. He averaged 1.6 fights every year he’s been an elected member of the Filipino Congress, near half of them being against P4P/HOF fighters with the entire scope of his fighting and political life melding seamlessly into the whole of his life that is not only unheard in those two completely unrelated pursuits, yet scarcely comprehensible in the limited modern scope of understanding seminal history in the making before our very eyes.

He has fought in Brisbane, Australia and Macao, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well as inaugurating the brand new Cowboy Stadium with 2 epic shutouts over Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito to establish Cowboy stadium as the premiere boxing stadium in the US not to mention his epic forays in Vegas. He goes to where the $$$ is, wisely I would say.

There is no modern great who brought the “great” fight to so many diverse peoples in and out of the ring in this decade.

We of the western boxing community did not know him at the start of 2000 when he was still fighting as a super bantamweight in the Philippines, but by 2001 this skinny little Filipino made his US debut at the new MGM in Vegas with a sensational KO for his first superbantam world title, kicking off the irresistible, irrevocable Manny Pacquiao era that has been with we, the boxing folk, ever since. He may well have become the most internationally known boxing icon ever since he has basically opened up the vast 3 billion Asian market to boxing far beyond their traditional Southeastern Asian boxing that has always been there. The Chinese have made some significant inroads and the traditional Indonesian/Thailand boxing countries are now stronger than ever with even India also fielding amateur boxing teams and professional.

Manny’s opponent list for 2010-2019:

20 Keith Thurman 29 0 0 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas
W-SD World Boxing Association Super World Welterweight Title

2019-01-19 Adrien Broner 33 3 1 MGM Grand, Las Vegas
W-UD World Boxing Association World Welterweight Title

2018-07-15 Lucas Martin Matthysse 39 4 0 Axiata Arena, Kuala Lumpur
W-TKO World Boxing Association World Welterweight Title

2017-07-02 Jeff Horn 16 0 1 Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane
L-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2016-11-05 Jessie Vargas 27 1 0 Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas
W-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2016-04-09 Timothy Bradley Jr 33 1 1 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas
W-UD vacant World Boxing Organisation International Welterweight Title

2015-05-02 Floyd Mayweather Jr 47 0 0 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas L-UD World Boxing Council World Welterweight Title
World Boxing Association Super World Welterweight Title
World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2014-11-23 Chris Algieri 20 0 0 Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao
W-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2014-04-12 Timothy Bradley Jr 31 0 0 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas W-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2013-11-24 Brandon Rios 31 1 1 Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao
W-UD vacant World Boxing Organisation International Welterweight Title

2012-12-08 Juan Manuel Marquez 54 6 1 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas L-KO

2012-06-09 Timothy Bradley Jr 28 0 0 MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas L-SD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2011-11-12 Juan Manuel Marquez 53 5 1 MGM Grand, Las Vegas
W-MD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2011-05-07 Shane Mosley 46 6 1 MGM Grand, Las Vegas
W-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

2010-11-13 Antonio Margarito 38 6 0 Cowboys Stadium, Arlington
W-UD vacant World Boxing Council World Super Welterweight Title

2010-03-13 Joshua Clottey 35 3 0 Cowboys Stadium, Arlington
W-UD World Boxing Organisation World Welterweight Title

Let’s look further: His collective opponent record at the time of their fights in this decade adds up to 560-39-7, and that divided by 16 fights yields an average opponent record of 35-2, and again, just the sheer density of the quality of his competition stands above all other Fighter of the Decade candidates.

Now I could Blah-Blah and moan in ecstasy about the number of PPVs Manny was in and the hundreds of million$$$ he made for himself and boxing, but that would just cheapen the fighter aspect of Fighter of the Decade. With Pacquiao soon to be 41 years of age this year and entering his 4th fight decade, he will be looking in 2020 to make another great fight if he can, great being how he always tackles a brutal, blunt force sport in such an infectious, joyous manner against the best. He is the embodiment of The Alpha and The Omega and The Joy of Boxing wrapped up in the most compactly framed welterweight in history save that of the legendary Homicide Henry Armstrong who would be downsized in this massive new era of day before weigh ins and scientific weight loss and gain tricks.

Folks, in his last fight, Keith Thurman had been a young gun at the top of P4P lists until his health recovery interim after shoulder surgery, 29-0 in the full flower of his rejuvenated youth, yet Pacquiao steadily took the fight to him for 12 rounds, charging and prodding and then firing himself at Thurman with superhuman energy. Thurman, whose face was blotchy and bleeding before the end of the first round after suffering a knockdown, did not know what to make of it; there’s no chance he’d ever experienced this form of relentless mayhem. He was in the ring with a maniacal fighter fighting for something nobody else can see, his beloved Filipino peoples.

Manny’s superhuman P4P strength is like that of the great Achilles, born flesh, blood, and bone to be controlled magnificently by a one off instinctive fighting brain and fast twitching neurons that ultimately must succumb to the ravages of mortality as all mortals must do in their stages. So, in the interest of his health and that of his family, I propose he take the riches that an Amir Khan fight in Dubai would bring to settle the score against another fighter Mayweather ducked before riding off into the sunset of our yesteryears in 2020.  He will always be the most riveting fighter of his generation and for generations well past this one.