Manny Pacquiao's Top 5 Greatest Matches: The Fight for the Absolute Champion

Manny's Top 5 Greatest Matches Pacquiao: The fight for the absolute champion

The fight for the absolute top in the welterweight division

Manny Pacquiao is undoubtedly one of the most talked about names in boxing this century. Holder of a number of world titles in various categories, the Filipino has become a fan favorite over time and his successes are increasingly talked about and written about. His matches are among the most memorable non-heavyweight bouts. We've already featured two of PacMan's five best matches, but next we'll reminisce about the welterweight clash with Keith Thurman, which we rank third in Pacquiao's top 5 greatest fights.

The match, played on 20th July 2019, pits WBA world welterweight titleholder, 8-division champion and 61-70-fight champion Pacquiao against the still undefeated WBA super-welterweight world champion Keith Thurman, who still does not know the taste of defeat, after in his first 30 matches in the professional ring he has 29 victories, 22 of them by knockout and one draw. The match takes place in familiar territory for Pacquiao - Las Vegas, Nevada at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

It's a clash that pits the 40-year-old Pacquiao, who is definitely in the twilight of his career but still shows immense class, against the future of the division, the 30-year-old American born in Clearwater, Florida. In the days leading up to the fight, favoritism quickly shifted from Thurman to Pacquiao, with the younger boxer saying how much he respects his opponent and how he would be honored to end his career.

The two began to stalk each other in the ring from the start, but experience proved to be key in the first round, which ended with a knockdown in favor of Pacquiao. By the fifth part, the Filipino dominated, managing to bleed his opponent's nose and inflict several quality combinations to the head and body. The way Pacquiao controls the pace of the fight does not sit well with Thurman, who prefers more relaxed meetings with less intensity.

In the second part of the rounds, however, Thurman turned out to be more cunning than his opponent, because he was already looking for the mistakes of the increasingly tired Pacquiao, managing to protect himself from the combinations of the Filipino. In the tenth round, when everything seemed to be heading for a draw, Pacquiao managed to pin his opponent with a beautiful left hook, and Thurman began to run around the ring to survive. After the match, the American admits that this blow, although to the body, took a huge toll on him and he even threw away his dental protector so that he could breathe more deeply. This moment also turns out to be decisive for the evaluations of the judges after the end of the match. Two of them gave victory to Pacquiao with 115 to 112, and one awarded the victory to Thurman - 114:113. To the decisive moment in the tenth round, we also add the knockdown in the first, which experts consider the key moments that brought one of the hardest, but sweetest victories for Pacquiao.

The Filipino became the oldest welterweight to win a world title and he did it against an undefeated, much younger, slightly taller boxer like Thurman. Further proof that Pac-Man's greatness won't be caught up anytime soon.