The End of an Era: Manny Pacquiao Retires. Thoughts and Reflections on his Career?

As I'm sure most of you will have heard, the great Manny Pacquiao has officially announced his retirement from the sport after twenty-six years, and it can't pass without at least some discussion. Some retirements - not many, but a precious few - really do have that 'End of an Era' feel about them and I'd say this one definitely falls into that category.

It's pointless listing all the immense statistics of his career, as they've been covered in more than enough detail over the years, but I'd be interested to read people's general feelings about him as a fighter and consider some of the questions below. Honestly one of the most astonishing fighting speciments any of us will have seen or ever see; speed, genuine knockout power, outstanding footwork and angles, limitless stamina and almost always gave value for money. As the years passed he developed his game and learnt to become a much more complete, cerebral and two-handed fighter as well. One slight failing he never fully eradicated was that he wasn't a great in-fight adapter, but his power, workrate, angles and speed were all so great he usually didn't have to adapt all that much!

Any thoughts on the questions below, then?

Favourite Pacquiao fight: Tough on as there are a lot to choose from, but I'd probably lean towards the first Marquez fight all the way back in 2004.

Pacquiao's greatest performance: Again there's some stern competition but I can't look past what he did against Cotto in 2009. He was absolutely sensational that night. Honourable mentions to the first Barrera rout, and I also loved his annihilation of Matthysse a few years back.

Fantasy fights you'd love to see Pacquiao in: Plenty to choose from here given all the weight classes he conquered. But how about this - Pacquiao against Gomez at Super-Bantam? Can you imagine that!?

Would also be interested to hear where you guys rate Manny all-time, or at least in comparison with the other leading greats of the past thirty, forty years or so. Thanks for everything, Manny - you were the sport's main shining light for a while and you'll always be one of its greats.

On the last question Pacquiao would definitely be top 30 p4p all time and I'd probably only have Jones, Whitaker and ********** above him from the past thirty years. That's just a rough guess and he'd be fairly interchangeable with Hopkins, Pacman having the slight edge for the excitement of his fights.

It's hard to look past the Cotto performance but his subsequent performances once the scrutiny began still leave me wondering. He's defined by the four fights with Marquez and it hurts his standing that he lost the majority of those rounds quite convincingly.

Amazing how you can be a Flyweight at 21 and then smash Welterweights about.. Certainly was a superman..

Shame Azumah Nelson never fought Hagler...

But seeing as I think most athletes flounce the rules.. a wonderful fighter and with Mayweather steadied the Boxing ship through bad times...

Top 15 alltime.. Just behind Floyd.

Would you have given the same response if he was an American Trussy?

Have to agree with you though. Boxing stinks right now, and clean or not at least Manny was entertaining to watch. His utter destruction of Hatton remains one of my all time Manny Moments.

Manny against Sweet Pea would have been interesting...

Whittaker was too cute..

Pacquiao would probably get the decision against Whitaker but everyone watching would be in agreement it was a robbery. He could look sensational against shall we say cruder* opponents but was vulnerable to a decent counter puncher.

*this is probably a bit insulting to Cotto but a stylist he was not.

I'd take Whitaker over Pacquiao at 135 for sure, but at Welter? I'd still probably edge towards Whitaker but I think it's much more competitive and I wouldn't put it past Pacquiao to nick a win, albeit as Soul has alluded to there's every chance it would be very controversial.

Whitaker was a head-to-head monster at Lightweight, but aside from the two McGirt and Chavez fights, he never really showed his best form as a Welterweight. Part of that might be down to the fact that Main Events had trouble getting him worthy opponents for much of his title reign there due to the HBO versus Showtime divide and Lou Duva's particularly frosty relationship with King. He didn't really need to get out of second gear to beat the likes of Jacobs and Rodriguez and I think 1995, when he came back down from Light-Middle after beating Vasquez around the time George Benton left his team, was the end of prime Whitaker. The version after that, while still a class fighter, could certainly have lost a decision to the Welterweight Pacquiao.

A more interesting point to consider is whether Pacquiao might outrank Whitaker in the all-time great stakes and take his (or Hagler's, I guess) crown as the greatest left hander of them all. I used to think there was no way, but Pacquiao's longevity is hard to ignore here. Although he got distracted once or twice he generally lived the life and maintained his core abilities for an incredibly long time. Whitaker had good enough longevity overall, especially for his time, but he was off his rocker and hooked on the hoover once he got into his thirties and he arguably underachieved slightly as a result. As I said, an absolute head-to-head monster and a great record to back it up - but maybe not quite as great as it could or should have been.

For me Pacquiao was clearly fading as far back as 2011 / 2012 but he carried on winning titles and putting on exemplary performances against some of the supposedly leading Welters in the world for almost another decade after that. Even as recently as 2018 / 2019 the performances against Matthysse and Thurman (at least for the first few rounds) had spells where he looked almost like a prime Pacman, and this was at the age of forty, twenty-odd years into his career.

Pacquiao didn't have Whitaker's ring IQ and I accept that in the Marquez series (which although close overall, I think he was very lucky to emerge 2-1-1 from) he was probably bested more than once in his prime years in a way Whitaker never was. But Pacquiao does have an insane amount of high class wins spread over a huge period of time to make up for that.

I'm not saying I'd definitely put him ahead of Pea, but it's closer than I used to thought and probably worth re-examining.

Firstly, let me just wish Manny all the best for his retirement, but I also have to say that I think he hung around too long. I know that health and training improvements has allowed boxers to continue their careers into their late 30's and beyond but there's always a risk of taking too many punches to the head, However, I wouldn't wish long term injury on anyone so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Manny.

Manny was a great fighter though he was never one of my favourites. I think the Mayweather fight happened about 4 to 5 years too late for him but I would have always favoured Mayweather anyway. A few years earlier and Manny would have made the fight more competitive.

My favourite Manny victory was definitely him flattening Hatton. I was in a house full of Filipinos that night who had ordered the fight on PPV. The place exploded when Manny won especially due to the way he won (sorry to you Hatton fans but I never took to humble Ricky).

Good luck Manny.

Nice to see you dropping in, Atila.

With the age I was at the time, it was hard not to get caught up in the Hatton hysteria to a certain degree back in the 2000s and I remember that demolition at Pacquiao's hands being one of the few genuinely shocking moments I've had watching a fight.

I thought Pacquiao would probably win but I was expecting it to be more along the lines of the Diaz and De La Hoya fights which had gone before; Manny proving too fast and eventually overwhelming him before it all got too much for Hatton late on. Those two took quite a lot of chopping before they went and I guess like a lot of people I'd overestimated Hatton's chin and durability, perhaps due to that rough 'n' tumble, come-forward style which was such a big part of his persona.

In hindsight (and in fairness some were saying it at the time) it seems very generous to him, but Hatton was still cracking pound for pound top ten lists in 2009. It was supposed to be a tough assignment for Manny, what with Hatton's pledge that he'd simply be "too big" (as opposed to "too good") for Pacquiao and the fact that Pacquiao had still been fighting at Super-Featherweight only fifteen months before. When the bell rang I couldn't quite believe the sheer gap in talent which was visible between the two fighters, right from the off.

You might remember in the build up, Freddie Roach was really dismissive of Hatton as a fighter and was repeatedly expressing his amazement that the bookies had it priced as anything approaching a competitive fight. Roach was starting to become a bit of a media darling at the time as Pacquiao became a global megastar, and usually he'd always say the right things and be complimentary about any upcoming opponent. But with Hatton he was really damning in a way you seldom hear from a trainer approaching a big fight.

You can still find the videos from back then where he says that he doesn't understand how Hatton ever got a reputation for being an exciting fighter, because all his fights were boring and all he ever did was throw one punch then hold. Promised a knockout inside of three rounds and said he didn't care about giving a game plan away because Hatton had no defence, awful footwork, poor fundamentals and an idiot in his corner in Mayweather Sr.

I remember thinking at the time it was a little overblown from Roach, and a tad disrespectful. But you'd have to say he was proven absolutely right. 2009 really was Pacquiao's absolute zenith. No wonder Mayweather didn't fancy it at that stage.