Manny Pacquiao Embarrassed in Three-Round Exhibition, The End of the Line Must Be Now

For much of his three-round exhibition bout Sunday at the Saitama Super Arena in Japan, Manny Pacquiao looked like the befuddled B-side and kickboxer Rukiya Anpo looked like the boxing legend playing with his opponent.

It was THAT bad.

Simply put, the 45-year-old Pacquiao has no business fighting anymore. If money is an issue, then maybe the future first-ballot Hall of Famer needs to scale back his lifestyle. Because, nope, boxing is no longer an option.

The 28-year-old Anpo, a former K-1 champion with a nearly 7-inch height advantage, looked infinitely fresher than his 17-year-older opponent and landed crisper punches throughout the contest.

A sluggish Pacquiao, who got tagged in the first round, gave way to a more animated Pacquiao in the second. But that spirit only served to get the Filipino icon tagged again by Anpo. Although the former multi-division world champ had some brief positive moments, he just could never get inside to cause any real damage to his taller, quicker, younger opponent.

In the third round, Pacquiao was actually buzzed by a couple of crisp shots by Anpo, who was now fighting with supreme confidence. Pacquiao would finish the third and final round with a spirited face-saving flurry of punches, but even through that final moment bluster, Anpo still landed the crisper, more effective punches.

If this were a bout with actual judges at ringside, Pacquiao would’ve lost all three rounds– two quite decisively. But, sans judges, the bout finished as a no-decision draw.

“I hope this is not the last,” Pacquiao said after the fight, referring to, perhaps, continuing on with his ring efforts.

“Anpo is strong and fights well even though he does not have a lot of boxing experience. He did his best to give a good fight.”

This was Pacquiao’s third exhibition bout since his last actual, “real” boxing match in August of 2021 when he lost his WBA welterweight belt to Cuba’s Yordenis Ugas in a startlingly decisive unanimous decision defeat.

The boxing world felt they had seen the last of Pacquiao after that humbling loss. But his retirement just happened to coincide with the hot trend of exhibition boxing matches. Manny would enter the ring just about one year after the Ugas bout, taking on former WBA super bantamweight champion Jesus Salud in an exhibition bout in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Four months later, Pacquiao would fight another exhibition, this time against South Korean martial artist and YouTuber, DK Yoo at the Korea International Exhibition Center.

Both were non-eventful, but ultimately positive showings. This latest exhibition with Anpo, however, was anything but a positive for him.

Up until Sunday’s showing, there were rumblings of Pacquiao getting back into the grind of real boxing and taking a shot at WBC welterweight titlist Mario Barrios.

After what we all saw on Sunday, everybody in the boxing world– including Pacquiao, himself– has to know that such a return would be disastrously ill-advised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYRusmZUGyg