After five years outside the ring and thirty-six minutes inside of it, the saga which once was the mega event between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao is now over. On Saturday night from a packed MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas with hundreds of celebrities on hand, thirty-eight year old Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr remained undefeated and gave the forty-eight reason of why we should consider him The Best Ever with a unanimous decision over Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, 36, with scores of 118-110 and 116-112 twice.
Many fans and even media alike took to social media since they expected Floyd Mayweather to fight out of character or never had seen a “Money” fight before and complained the fight wasn’t nearly worth all the hype, money and effort that was put forth to make it happen.
After three national anthems including the Mexican one even though neither of the combatants on Saturday night of the main event have a drop of south of the border blood in them and the Burger King walking with Mayweather Jr towards the ring, the much expected fight began with Mayweather Jr controlling the action at the center of the ring. Despite his quick feet and quicker hands, the shorter Pacquiao had real trouble getting on the inside of the longer reach of Mayweather Jr and kept getting tagged with right hands. Pacquiao’s best moments were when he was able to push Mayweather Jr against the ropes and throw combinations to the head and body of “Money” but didn’t score much of it. In fact, despite throwing more punches, Pacquiao only scored nineteen percent of his total punches. Mayweather Jr began to pull away in the second half as he made Pacaquiao look like the rest of his opponents, without answers and out of energy.
The days after the fight have been as controversial as the ones before with Pacquiao claiming that he suffered a right shoulder injury weeks prior to the fight. So serious was the lesion that the sparring partners were sent home weeks in advance according to the post of one of them on Facebook. According to his team, Pacquiao underwent treatment for his shoulder and it improved but to not one hundred percent. Top Rank and Team Pacquiao have claimed that they requested from the Nevada State Athletic Commission to undergo a procedure on the night of the fight to relieve some of the pain but they state that it was denied by the state agency. Pacquiao has gone as far as to say that he was at only 60% for the fight and it the rematch he is seeking, he would be at 100%.
At the post fight press conference, Mayweather Jr stated that he will be vacating his four titles and actually vacated the WBO one which he beat Pacquiao for, right then and there. He stated that it was time for other fighter’s to compete for them. He also said that his next fight will be his last although he did not date to say who he will face next. Pacquiao said he did not have any plans in returning as of yet to the ring and instead will go on vacation with his family.
