Boxing: Back in the ring, Manny Pacquiao battles the ghost of Muhammad Ali
“Time is a vandal,” journalist Jimmy Cannon wrote. He watched his hero, Joe Louis, get beaten mercilessly into retirement by Rocky Marciano in 1951. Louis was Ali’s hero, too, and, in 1980, Louis went to Caesar’s Palace in his wheelchair and saw Larry Holmes brutalize Ali until Angelo Dundee finally stopped the beating.
Eight years later, in 1988, when Mike Tyson fought Holmes, Tyson’s childhood hero Ali was there to whisper in his ear: “Get him for me.” And Tyson did, knocking Holmes out in four rounds. Seventeen years later, at age 39, Tyson, two years after filing for bankruptcy, was fighting an unknown journeyman and quit on his stool after seven rounds.
When Manny Pacquiao, 42 — four years older than Ali was in 1980—gets into the ring against Yordenis Ugas at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas today, he will be battling the ghosts of those greats before him as much as anyone wearing gloves and trunks. Since Pacquiao suffered a knockout loss against Juan Manuel Marquez at the end of 2012, he’s fought 10 more fights, winning eight, but not with his usual knockout power.
The fight will be aired on Fox PPV and features a guaranteed purse of $5 million for Pacquiao (with pay-per-view upside potentially adding $20 million to $25 million). It was slated to feature Pacquiao against undefeated world champion Errol Spence Jr. before a routine, pre-fight eye exam revealed Spence had a torn retina in his left eye. Pacquiao was a 2.5-1 underdog against Spence, and many experts viewed those odds as generous given the 31-year-old’s age and pedigree. WBA champion Yordenis Ugás, 35, has stepped in as a replacement for Spence on one of boxing’s largest stages—much as Pacquiao did two decades ago.
Pacquiao burst on the boxing scene in 2001, after he anonymously entered the front door of Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club, located above a strip mall in Hollywood, Calif. The 22-year-old, five-foot-five, 112-pound Filipino had once sold doughnuts on the streets of General Santos City in the Philippines to survive before he turned to boxing.
