LAS VEGAS—Manny Pacquiao had won three professional bouts and was two weeks away from his first knockout victory by the time Mario Barrios was born.
So there was little surprise that familiar
Manny Pacquiao had won three professional bouts and was two weeks away from his first knockout victory by the time Mario Barrios was born.
So there was little surprise that familiar chants of “Manny! Manny!” broke out when the Filipino ring icon was introduced before a good-sized crowd at Friday’s weigh-in at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
LIVE: Manny Pacquiao vs Mario Barrios – WBC welterweight title fight
It’s been four years since Pacquiao retired, six since he last won a boxing match that mattered, and it’s like he never stopped fighting at all. The pride of Saranggani province—and of the Philippines—is remains a captivating draw in this neon-lit gambling haven in the middle of the Nevada desert.
The 46-year-old Pacquiao was in his typical mood: beaming, waving to the crowd and basking in the adoration before and after he hit the scales at officially 146.8 pounds.
“Those four years that I retired from boxing, it was good for my body because I’ve been in boxing for how many decades and I have been fighting since I was 12 years old,” said Pacquiao, who turned professional in 1995 and won his first world title in 1998 as a flyweight via an eighth-round knockout of Chatchai Sasakul in front of his opponent’s home crowd in Thailand—Barrios was 3 at that time.
