You’ve made your point: You can still go toe-to-toe with the best in your weight class. You have a lot of fight left in you. Maybe an extra month of training could have added zest and spring to those once-nimble feet. A point or two in the judges’ scorecard might have swung the contest in your favor. Or a well-timed haymaker could have given you the knockout win you haven’t delivered in 16 years. 

Yes, you could have beaten Mario Barrios for his welterweight title. You came so tantalizingly close, and in the eyes of many, you did. At 46, you could have upstaged George Foreman and Bernard Hopkins as the oldest fighter to win a champion’s belt. Maybe even earned a rematch with the slippery Floyd Mayweather for another ginormous paycheck. 

But what for, Manny?

“I want to create a legacy I can leave behind,” you said in the postfight interview. But your legacy is already carved in granite. Your name has just been enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, that pantheon of boxing immortals, alongside eight of your victims, all champions who were inducted before you.  

Your records—as the only boxer to win 12 titles in eight weight divisions and as the oldest man, at 40, to win the welterweight title—may never be broken in your lifetime.  You have nothing left to prove; your legacy is secure.

For the money? Well, a paycheck of close to $20 million—a base purse of $12 million plus a significant share of the pay-per-view revenue—is no small change. It’s a tidy sum added to the $575 million that the Sporting News estimated to be your total earnings in your illustrious career. More than half a billion dollars—mind-boggling for anyone, but more so for the scrawny kid who clawed out of the depths of poverty with nothing but heavy fists. 

You may have squandered a good chunk of that fortune chasing the quixotic dream of the presidency in 2022, mounting a failed comeback in the Senate earlier this year, and appeasing the insatiable taxman all these years. But it’s hard to believe you need the money or whatever it is that you stand to make in a rematch with Barrios or another dance with Mayweather.  

“Let’s fight again,” you said, actually throwing down the gauntlet to the man who had dodged you for years and danced, clinched, cowered, and ran when you finally caught up with him in the ring. I could almost hear Mayweather say, “Fat chance.”

Pride? Most likely. “Pacman is back, and the journey continues,” you declared. You have a healthy balance of pride and humility that motivates you to seek one more moment of triumph, for God and country. In all of your big fights, you carried the flag so proudly and praised God so profusely. But the Bible that you so often quote reminds us: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

To be sure, you picked the perfect champion to challenge. Having lost your last fight in a lackluster performance against the inept Yordenis Ugas, you hung up your gloves. Your side hustle as a politician became your day job. You watched as Barrios wrestled the title from Ugas two years ago, then, after four years out of the ring and after two consecutive election losses, you decided you could no longer ignore the itch to fight again.

Lacking in elite pedigree, Barrios beckoned as a patsy compared to the boxing legends you had fought before—Mayweather, Oscar de la Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley, Juan Manuel Marquez, Erik Morales, and Marco Antonio Barrera. Sixteen years your junior, Barrios was only eight when you destroyed Barrera, his hometown hero, in San Antonio, Texas, in 2003. The welterweight champion just did not have the legacy-defining fight that would elevate him to the status of the stars in the lighter weight classes—the lightweight and super lightweight divisions. 

Manny, you did nothing in the past four years to earn a contender’s rating in any of the alphabet soup of international boxing organizations (WBC, WBA, WBO, IBF, etc.) and merit a legitimate shot at a title. But the World Boxing Council gave you a title shot, thanks to a peculiar rule that allows comebacking legendary champions like you to jump the queue of contenders and challenge for the title. 

And so, the stage was set: Pacman vs Super Mario at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, site of 16 of your fights, including your most memorable wins (against De la Hoya, Hatton, Marquez, and Cotto) and two of your most painful losses (a knockout by Marquez and a unanimous decision to Mayweather). You and Mayweather have brought billions of dollars in business to Sin City over the years.

And with thousands of loyal fans chanting “Manny! Manny! Manny!” the MGM Grand Garden Arena was your home ring once again. While it is customary for the challenger to be called to the ring first, you were called second because you were no ordinary challenger. In fact, as if with awed reverence, ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. introduced you as the “legendary challenger” and a “true legend of the sport.” Other than Lennon’s superlatives and Barrios’ Aztec-themed entrance, it was a no-frills prefight introduction. No fanfare, no singing pastors or entertainers to render national anthems, no celebrities to show on television, no kiss-cam scandal to flash on the jumbotron.

You dictated the pace from the opening bell as Barrios looked tentative and cautious. But it was clear your footwork was off, and when you tried to mix it up late in the third round, the champion caught you with a pair of rights.

Barrios, taller by six inches with a four-inch reach advantage, tagged you with several stiff jabs. It was obvious that age had slowed you down, and four years of inactivity had dulled your skills. But you came back with combinations that befuddled your younger opponent and with guile that came with the experience of more than 40 world title fights. The old champion in you came in flashes—the bobbing, the weaving, the feints, and the flurries. But your legs seemed heavy as if they were nailed to the canvas, and they were slow to backpedal. Flat-footed, you were an easy target for Barrios’ jabs and occasional rights. You were not as quick to defend as the young Manny Pacquiao, but you were lucky Barrios did not have the arsenal to inflict heavy damage on an opponent of your caliber.

Your biggest moment came in the eighth round as you attacked and counter-punched well with combinations, although your signature volume was gone. Your once-deadly one-two-three-four combos stopped at two, but they were sharp enough to give you the lead in all three scorecards—by three in two tallies and by one in another—going into the final three rounds. 

Sensing he was behind, Barrios came alive in the 10th round. He showed no signs of desperation, and he was calm, cold, and calculated. You grew tentative, and Barrios made you pay. He connected with a couple of vicious uppercuts at close quarters and more of the stinging jabs. You missed more shots than you landed. And the few shots that connected stirred the partisan crowd into delirium, but they did not have the power that had stopped the likes of De la Hoya, Hatton, Morales, Barrera, Cotto, and 34 other opponents.

This continued in the 11th and 12th rounds, with Barrios methodically gnawing at your lead. In the end, he won the nod of one judge, 115-113, and escaped with a draw in the two other scorecards, 114-114. All three judges awarded the final three rounds to your opponent. Not a win, not a loss; a majority draw.

For what it’s worth, this over-the-hill sportswriter had you winning by two points, just as he had you winning by one over Mayweather more than 10 years ago.

“I did my best. I’m happy with my performance, although I’m not happy with my combinations. I should have been more aggressive,” you said. You did not agree with the verdict, but: “I’m still thankful I did not lose.”

Exactly the sentiment of people who held their breath and worried about your safety. Las Vegas oddsmakers are heartless; they had you losing to Barrios at almost 2-1 odds. Some boxing experts even feared for your life. Not since you were an unknown going up against the heavily favored Barrera in 2003 have the bookmakers stacked the odds so high against you.

“The old man hit hard as f-ck,” Barrios grudgingly admitted, speaking like a man who had just dodged a bullet. Last Saturday night in Las Vegas, he walked away with his title; you escaped with your life. 

But you once again showed more heart than we expected. You showed us flashes of the old Manny Pacquiao. You once again defied the tall odds. You gave us one more night to remember.

Thank you for that. But Manny, enough is enough.

Jun Engracia, former news editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, has been a sportswriter for 53 years. He is one of the few boxing writers to have covered two bouts hyped as Fights of the Century—the Ali-Frazier Thrilla in Manila in 1975 and the Pacquiao-Mayweather megafight in Las Vegas in 2015—40 years apart. (His verdict: The Thrilla delivered on its promise; the latter, not quite.)