Top 12 Greatest ‘WTF’ Pacman Moments

It’s Manny Pacquiao’s birthday, fight freaks, so what better time to look back and appreciate anew his extraordinary career and celebrate all the ‘Manny Moments’ that make Pacquiao a one-of-a-kind superstar. Some made us nod in reverence or gasp in awe, while on occasion, others made us shake our heads in embarrassment or pity. The PacMan’s career is primarily one of incredible success, but along the way there were some valleys which, of course, only make the peaks that much sweeter. When you add it all up, there’s no doubt Manny Pacquiao is as worthy of celebration as any other boxing superstar. For proof, look no further than these twelve unforgettable ‘WTF’ moments. Check ’em out:

12. Jan. 26, 2006: The Mexicutioner Arrives
Before Mexican Style, there was The Mexicutioner. After Pacquiao won a super bantamweight belt from Lehlo Ledwaba, on two weeks notice, mind you, he embarked on a journey of destruction against Aztec prizefighters. He knocked out Emmanuel Lucero in three, outclassed and stopped Marco Antonio Barrera over eleven, and dropped Juan Manuel Marquez three times before earning a controversial draw.

Then came Morales. While Manny Pacquiao’s first encounter against El Terrible was a dramatic battle that saw him drop a clear decision, it also set up one of the Filipino’s biggest wins, when in front of a packed Thomas and Mack Center in Vegas, he enacted revenge on Morales. Pacquiao dropped the Mexican great twice in the tenth, gave him the worst beating of his career to that point, and stopped him for the first time ever. The outcome moved Larry Merchant to call Pacquiao a demi-god, a “combination of Ali, Elvis and Bruce Lee.” After we managed to lift our jaws up from the floor, the rest of us just called him effin’ amazing.

11. May 8, 2004: Lightning Strikes Thrice 
The opening three minutes of Manny Pacquiaos’s rivalry with Juan Manuel Marquez still represent perhaps his most brutal display of aggression against an elite talent. Marquez was taking his time, mostly retreating and feinting, trying to figure out Pacquiao’s timing, when boom! a left hand explodes on his face and sends him to the canvas. The Mexican gets up, decides to bring the fight to Pacquiao, only for the southpaw to unleash another combination and boom! there it is again, that freakin’ left fist square on his nose sending his ass to the floor.

Surely it couldn’t happen a third time, right? Think again: with Marquez’ back to the ropes, Manny fires another left, and again the Mexican crumbles, his nose bloodied beyond recognition and his brain rattling in confusion: “What the hell just happened!?” Manny Pacquiao: that’s what happened. “Juan Manuel Marquez hasn’t seen anything like that!” cried Jim Lampley on the HBO broadcast as Dinamita walked back to his corner. “Who has!?” retorted Larry Merchant without missing a beat. And no, that the Mexican maestro came back to eke out a draw doesn’t detract one bit from the “Holy-shit!”-ness of that first round.

10. Nov. 16, 2009: A Time For Hope
November of 2009 will forever be remembered as the peak of Pacquiao-mania, when fascination with the Filipino enveloped not only his native Philippines, but practically the whole world. Within days of his historic victory over Miguel Cotto, Manny’s face graced the cover of Time magazine and he was also named one of that publication’s ‘Persons of the Year.’ It’s not often a boxer’s fame holds the same currency in all countries and we really have to go back to Mike Tyson to find a name as recognizable on a global basis as that of Manny Pacquiao.

But in fact Manny drew more comparisons to Muhammad Ali than to Iron Mike, as he was both beloved and respected the world over. His name became synonymous with hope for millions: his fellow Filipinos hoped to see the Pacman cement his status as a worldwide ambassador of their country; fight fans hoped the ascension of Manny Pacquiao would provide boxing a much needed boost; and everyone hoped to see a confrontation for pound-for-pound supremacy with a returning Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s anyone’s guess when we might ever again see a boxer hold that kind of global appeal.

9. July 20, 2019: “One Time” Falls To A 40-Year-Old 
It won’t go down as the most scintillating of Manny Pacquiao’s performances but it was better than anyone had a right to expect. And for those who viewed Manny’s refusal to retire with trepidation and dread, this was not a match-up they were looking forward to. After all, if Jeff Horn could give Pacquiao so much trouble two years before, and if, at times, Manny’s legs looked like they were stuck in quicksand during his win over Adrien Broner, then clearly there were reasons to be concerned as the Filipino marvel set to face a legit top talent with his 41st birthday less than six months away. No one could refute that Father Time was on Thurman’s side.

But when the final bell rang, what was even harder to refute was that Manny Pacquiao had won. And, all things considered, had looked fantastic in the process. In round one he sent Thurman to the floor with authority. In round five he battered him and bloodied his nose. In round ten he almost decked Keith a second time with a vicious body shot. And in the final round it was Pacquiao taking the fight to the younger man and finishing with a flourish as he added yet another unforgettable moment to his amazing career.

8. Nov. 13, 2010: Margarito Mauled
Following the Joshua Clottey letdown, Manny Pacquiao climbed up in weight to meet the largest foe he’s faced to date. In fact, many expected the Tijuana Tornado to land some serious leather on the smaller Pacman, though not many gave him a chance to win outright. And the Mexican did connect with some heavy artillery in round six, when he capped off his best stanza with a monstrous body shot that made Manny grimace in pain. Nevertheless, this would prove a mere footnote in what became yet another dominant and fearsome display from Pacquiao. By the end of the night Margarito’s orbital bone was broken, his right eye swollen to comical proportions, and his career dumped into the dustbin of history.

Many considered it rightful punishment to the Mexican for the shenanigans that preceded Margarito’s fight with Shane Mosley almost two years prior. Others just reveled in another amazing Manny Pacquiao show like kids watching a Disney-sponsored fireworks display, enjoying the endless stream of stinging rights and exploding lefts that rendered Margarito’s mug almost unrecognizable. That Pacquiao left a former titlist who outweighed him by seventeen pounds and towered above him by a full five inches in a condition resembling chopped liver made everyone sit up and reassess just how formidable a fighter the little Filipino was.

7. July 2, 2017: Sting Operation 
Virtual unknown Jeff “The Hornet” Horn, along with over fifty thousand rabid Australian fight fans, welcomed Manny Pacquiao into Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium for a welterweight title fight largely seen as a cash grab for the Filipino. Fast forward twelve bloody, action-packed rounds, and what we got instead was one of the most controversial, most talked-about decisions of recent times.

Most observers saw Manny Pacquiao emerge as the clear winner in a tougher-than-expected fight, but the judges awarded the hometown hero a decision that stripped Pacquiao of his title belt, cuing ESPN’s Teddy Atlas into a trademark, desk-pounding rant that became even more memorable than the fight itself. Atlas topped it off by confronting Horn about how and why he had lost the fight, telling him he didn’t deserve the judges’ nod in what he deemed an unmistakable home decision. Even by Teddy Atlas standards, this was bold to the extreme, and in fact many speculate that ESPN’s top brass was so unimpressed that this was the real reason they decided to part ways with the voluble trainer.

6. November 15, 2003: A Barrier Felled 
Pacquiao’s first fight with Mexican star Marco Antonio Barrera represents a momentous occasion in the Filipino’s career, as his stoppage of the “Baby-Faced Assassin” validated the Pacman’s credentials beyond all doubt and confirmed his membership among boxing’s elite. A three to one favorite, Barrera was riding high after victories over Naseem Hamed, Erik Morales and Jonny Tapia, but Manny twice knocked down the experienced warrior and pitched a shutout against a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

Barrera himself knew from early on he was dealing with more than he had bargained for; for proof look no further than the knockdown he suffered in round three: Pacquiao fires his trademark one-two, landing the left squarely on Marco’s chin, putting the Mexican on his butt. Barrera then sits forward, puts his arms on his knees and lowers his head, a fitting tribute to Pacquiao’s phenomenal talent.

5. November 14, 2009: Chopping Up Cotto 
Arguably the single greatest performance in the amazing career of Manny Pacquiao. His overwhelming domination of the third best welterweight in the world at the time–in his first fight at the weight–moved Bob Arum to proclaim him “the greatest boxer I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all, including Ali, Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard.”

Sure, Arum’s statement, like everything he says, was more than a little suspect, but given how high the boxing world was on Pacquiao in the aftermath of the Cotto win, the Bobfather’s comment accurately reflected the feelings of both fans and media-members who had witnessed a lethal combination of speed and power unlike anything in recent memory. To refine Arum’s argument, the victory over Miguel Cotto made Pacquiao look more like the second coming of Henry Armstrong than anything else: a guy who could move between weight divisions with unbelievable ease and not only defeat anyone he faced, but do so with dominance.

4. May 2, 2015: Shouldergate 
Given all of Pacquiao’s brilliant performances and thrilling battles, perhaps fans could have found it in their hearts to forgive the Pacman for the monumental egg he laid in his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. But in boxing things are seldom that easy, especially when the so-called “Fight of the Century” was also the biggest cash-grab of all time. No matter how beloved a fighter might be, fans who pay to see him perform expect at least a modicum of entertainment for their dollars.

When Pacquiao, one of the most entertaining pugilists of his era, failed so spectacularly at giving the public their money’s worth, after years of waiting for MayPac to happen, it felt like an unforgivable betrayal. Fans were only further incensed when Manny blamed his performance on a shoulder injury, as it confirmed that they had shelled out a ridiculous amount of cash for a match in which one of the participants was nowhere near his optimal fighting shape. On the biggest stage of his career, Pacquiao fell embarrassingly short of the mark.

3. Dec. 8, 2012: “He’s Not Getting Up, Jim!” 
Here is, without a doubt, the most bittersweet of all Manny Moments. After three hellacious, infuriatingly close contests, the Pacman and Dinamita met for a fourth time to settle the score once and for all. Both promised a knockout as three distance fights had failed to result in the kind of resolution everyone wanted. Like junkies aching for their fix, we all glued ourselves to our screens to watch both Pacquiao and Marquez deliver on their promises, providing us their most consistently violent fight yet. As usual, Pacquiao attacked and Marquez countered, but the viciousness was cranked to eleven, both fighters clearly sick of each other at this point. Marquez dropped Pacquiao in the third, but this only served to piss Manny off. The Filipino retaliated with nonstop combinations, his left hand lashing out again and again.

In the dying seconds of round six, with Marquez desperately looking for a chance to turn things around before reaching a point of no return, Pacquiao left himself wide open. Dinamita stepped outside of Manny’s jab and countered with a short, stiff right that put an abrupt end to both the Filipino’s awesome onslaught and the fight. Still, it had been a while since we had seen Pacquiao so hungry, so intent on destruction. He was so good that night that, in the midst of all the chaos he unleashed, he forgot who he was punching at: the one guy on the planet willing to walk through hell to knock him out.

2. Dec. 6, 2008: De La Hoya Demolished  
De La Hoya vs Pacquiao was a shocker from the moment it was signed, given that the Golden Boy had not competed below the super welterweight limit in years, and the fact that the smaller man had never fought above lightweight. The so-called “Dream Match” was set at 147 pounds, with most observers expecting Oscar to struggle to make weight but to then enter the ring with significant advantages in both weight and strength. Those expectations, reflected by the 2-to-1 odds in Oscar’s favor, were dashed when it became known that De La Hoya inexplicably stayed at the weight limit for days before the fight, showing up emaciated for both the weigh in and on fight night.

Thus, the astonishing unfolded before our eyes, with Manny Pacquiao beating up Oscar the way Superman would beat on a piñata if he really, really craved some candy. The never-ending blitz of left hands that transformed the Golden Boy’s good looks into a gross caricature left Oscar to surrender on his stool before the start of the ninth. By making Oscar quit and effectively retiring him, Pacquiao became not only boxing’s kingpin, but also its pound-for-pound boss.

1. May 2, 2009: The Greatest Hit 
After retiring the Golden Boy, Pacquiao dropped down to light welterweight to challenge lineal champ Ricky “Hitman” Hatton in a megabucks matchup. The Mancunian entered the ring as a 2-to-1 underdog, but fireworks were expected given both fighters’ aggressive styles. A complete mismatch is what transpired, played in fast-forward too, since Hatton had simply no way to keep up with the Pacman’s devilish pace. A portent of the grand finale that was to come was the beauty of a knockdown Manny scored in the first round, landing a lightning-quick right hook on Hatton’s chin.

Then a second knockdown came, erasing from Ricky’s face any last trace of self-confidence. Poor Ricky; if he only knew what was coming. To cap off the electrifying performance, Manny Pacquiao scored the most brutal, one-punch knockout of his career: a measuring jab, followed by a sinister left, turned off the lights inside Hatton’s head, and sent millions of Filipinos into ecstasy, millions of Brits into despair, and the rest of the boxing world into a furor. Was there anything the Filipino couldn’t do? After such a chilling display of violence, no rival seemed too big, too good, or too strong for the great Manny Pacquiao. Hyperbole, you say? For chrissakes’, just look at that damn left one more time and say with a straight face you didn’t think so too.

–Rafael Garcia