By Al S. Mendoza 

 

WHAT happened to Manny Pacquiao?

Why did he lose to Yordenis Ugas on Aug. 22 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada?

Wasn’t he supposed to win based on statistics and fight predictions?

Nothing much actually happened to Pacquiao, except that he has grown old.

With time not on his side anymore, Pacquiao has been slowed down like a car ravaged by wear and tear.

The statistics were all true: Pacquiao’s fight record is way too superior over that of Ugas’s.

In his 67 wins, Pacquiao scored 39 knockouts.

In his 26 wins, Ugas knocked out only 12, losing four.

In 25 years of boxing, Pacquiao became the only one to win eight world division titles, 12 world major world titles and a title each in four successive decades from the 1900s to the 2020s.

It will probably take forever before anyone can ever duplicate those feats.

Ugas has nothing but a title literally stolen from Pacquiao.

Citing inactivity, officials stripped Pacquiao of his World Boxing Association welterweight crown last January and gave it on a silver platter to Ugas.

Crazy you might say but, hey, this is boxing, the dirtiest game in town—next to politics.

Before he turned 42 on Dec. 17, 2020, Pacquiao won the world welterweight title in July 2019 to become the division’s oldest champion at 38.

He was trying to break his own age record against Ugas but, alas, not this time.

Father Time butted in.

Enough is enough.  You stop fooling around.  You ain’t got any gas left in your tank.

Look at the late Muhammad Ali.  He was the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time).  But at age 39, he retired, compiling a 56-5, win-loss record with 37 knockouts.

Ali beat the best boxers in his era, only to suffer humiliating defeats against unknowns when he refused to retire after Father Time started to slow him down.

Finally, after losing his last fight on points to nondescript Trevor Berbick in Nassau, Bahamas, on Dec. 11, 1981, Ali, 39, retired.

Not long after, Ali contracted Parkinson’s Disease.  He died on June 3, 2016.

Doctors said Ali’s ailment  was largely the result of the more than 200,000 hits Ali had absorbed in a 21-year career that began in the 1960 Rome Olympics where he won the light-heavyweight gold medal.

After age 35, boxers would start going downhill.

Flash Elorde also took the same sad route as Ali’s.

After establishing himself as the first globally acclaimed Filipino boxer, Elorde retired at age 37—after losing his last fight to Japanese unknown Hiroyuki Murakami in Japan on May 20, 1971.

When Pacquiao lost to Australian unknown Jeff Horn on July 2, 2017, calls for him to retire started to resonate.

He was 38 then.  And very much an accomplished boxer already.  A billionaire at that.  And a senator even.

Now that he lost again—to another no-name fighter from Cuba—Pacquiao should finally face the music:  Father Time has massively slowed him down.

In retirement, he will bask in the glory of his legacy.

But in stubbornly clinging to a belief that he can still hack it atop the ring, Pacquiao is risking his own life.

At age 42, the rocking chair beckons.

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