Their greatest bouts:
Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao have had some memorable victories.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. heads to the ultimate test of his unbeaten record Saturday when he meets Manny Pacquiao at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The hometown fighter has weathered a slew of demanding challenges since turning pro after the 1996 Olympics, from brawlers, veterans and distinguished champions. The one common link — Mayweather always left the ring with a win. Here’s The Times’ ranking of Mayweather’s five greatest fights: Manny Pacquiao’s rise from poverty in the Philippines to become a world champion, a congressman in his country and garner a co-starring role in the boxing match of this generation — Saturday against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. — has been a remarkable journey. Since arriving on the doorstep of trainer Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood in 2001, Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 knockouts) has won belts in seven of his record eight weight divisions. Pacquiao picked out for The Times what he considers his five greatest fights: 1. Oscar De La Hoya
For years, Mayweather believed, the biggest impediment to his ability to collect the riches his boxing talents deserved was the attention heaped on De La Hoya.
Their May 2007 fight at MGM Grand still stands as the best-selling pay-per-view fight in history with a record 2.48 million buys.
De La Hoya’s strategy to rely on his jab was working, but midway through the bout as the older fighter began to fatigue, the jab went absent. “I could see his shots coming, and I stayed outside,” Mayweather said after taking the fifth and sixth rounds on all three scorecards.
Two more good rights in the eighth by Mayweather changed the fight’s course.
Punch statistics for the fight showed Mayweather landed 207 to De La Hoya’s 122, and 138 power punches to De La Hoya’s 82. But the scorecards were close. “Look at the punch-stat numbers, and you can see why I’m the new champion tonight,” Mayweather said. “I just fought the best fighter in our era, and I beat him.” 2. Miguel Cotto
Cotto didn’t beat Mayweather in May 2012, but he brought the champion down a peg or two.
The stoic Puerto Rican had won three consecutive fights after a 12th-round technical knockout loss to Pacquiao in 2009.
Cotto, a well-schooled body puncher, challenged Mayweather, who answered with repetitive and accurate punches and won at least four of the first six rounds on the scorecards. Cotto swept the sixth.
Mayweather was aware he was in a fight to win over the judges and pressed the action in the ninth, sweeping that round, the 10th and the 11th by relying on brilliant combinations and effective counterpunches. Cotto couldn’t match Mayweather’s legendary conditioning.
Mayweather was so visibly beaten up after the bout he replaced his uncle/trainer, Roger Mayweather, with his defense-minded father, Floyd Mayweather Sr., as head trainer.
In the ring after the fight, Mayweather Jr. embraced Cotto and told him, “You are a hell of a champion — the toughest guy I fought.” 3. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez
The hope that Mayweather could lose keeps drawing a heavy number of pay-perview buys.
Proof came in September 2013, when fan favorite and Mexico’s then-unbeaten Alvarez was matched against Mayweather in a fight that would set a record $150 million in total pay-per-view sales.
Alvarez trained in Big Bear, so his conditioning would allow him to swarm Mayweather.
The masses ate it up, but he became another in Mayweather’s list of beaten foes of Mexican descent. From the start, Mayweather delivered a professorial performance over the younger Alvarez.
Mayweather’s speed ruled the early portion of the fight.
Times columnist Bill Dwyre wrote, “By the seventh, Mayweather was in complete control. He was on Floyd cruise, darting in at will, connecting on four or five jabs at a time. At one point, he had Alvarez in the corner for 30 seconds and just slapped away, mostly at will.” 4. Jose Luis Castillo rematch
Mayweather complained of a sore shoulder after escaping with a unanimous decision over Castillo in April 2002, in what is widely viewed as the closest thing to a loss on his record.
Punch stats in their first meeting showed Castillo landed 203 punches, while Mayweather connected on only 157 punches.
Mayweather returned eight months later with a far more convincing triumph in the Dec. 7, 2002, rematch.
The rematch was fought at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, with Mayweather producing what The Times reported as a “masterful” performance in what most observers considered a calculated boxing show that left nothing to doubt.
The Times’ Steve Springer wrote, “As the fight wore on, Castillo, his nose bloodied from the fourth round on, labored to merely lay a glove on Mayweather. A punch seemed out of the question.” 5. Genaro Hernandez
Mayweather’s technical brilliance has gotten him past several fighters who were considered too tough for him.
Such was the case when Mayweather won his first world title, on Oct. 3, 1998, against East Los Angeles’ Hernandez, then defending World Boxing Council superfeatherweight champion who had won a string of tough brawls at the Forum in Inglewood. Hernandez’s only loss before Mayweather was to De La Hoya in a bout for L.A. bragging rights.
Mayweather was a 21-year-old who had become the first U.S. 1996 Olympic boxer to land a title shot.
For the bout, televised by HBO from Las Vegas, Hernandez, 32, was paid $600,000, while Mayweather earned a purse of $150,000.
Hernandez was simply picked apart by Mayweather.
The difference in skill was so wide that Hernandez didn’t answer the bell for the ninth round. In 2011, Hernandez died of cancer, and his funeral at Resurrection Church in East L.A. was paid for by Mayweather.
— Lance Pugmire 1. Oscar De La Hoya
Even now, more than six years later, Pacquiao can barely believe he made a 12-pound jump from lightweight to welterweight to fight De La Hoya.
Pacquiao weighed 142 for his first fight above 135 pounds, and told The Times after stepping off the scale, “Speed will be the key to this fight.”
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach watched De La Hoya fight months earlier and said De La Hoya “couldn’t pull the trigger” any longer. From the opening bell, Pacquiao’s reaction time ruled. “I knew right away in the first round that I had him,” Pacquiao said.
In Round 7, CompuBox recorded a staggering 45 power punches by Pacquiao. That’s the most power punches De La Hoya ever absorbed in 31 fights monitored by the punch stat company. The final round of De La Hoya’s career was described by The Times like this:
“Pacquiao again corners De La Hoya with a sharp combination. De La Hoya’s attempted jab was in vain. De La Hoya is clearly drained, and worse, he’s wounded by a big Pacquiao left.”
Repeatedly, in De La Hoya’s corner after the round, he was asked if he wanted the fight stopped. No response came, maybe the slightest head nod. That was enough for trainer “Nacho” Beristain, who declared the fight over, with ring announcer Michael Buffer handling the landmark event with dignity: “Tonight, we turn a page in boxing history.” 2. Ricky Hatton Every fighter needs a signature moment. For Pacquiao, his came in a second-round knockout of Hatton on May 2, 2009, at MGM Grand.
Hatton, who’d been beaten only once previously, by Mayweather in 2007, was accompanied by a swarm of Brits in the arena. Hatton aligned with Floyd Mayweather Sr. as his trainer for the bout, and he and Pacquiao’s trainer Roach engaged in a memorable back and forth. Yet, Roach was confident of victory. “He looks so good,” Roach said of Pacquiao a day before the fight. “In a workout this week, he did everything in the game plan perfectly. I believe we’ll knock [Hatton] out.”
The Englishman was knocked down twice in the first round. Then, late in the second, Hatton moved in again, only to be greeted by the single most devastating punch of Pacquiao’s career, a left hook that ended the night and Hatton’s consciousness, briefly.
Times columnist Bill Dwyre described it: “Hatton’s eyes rolled back and his body fell, like a sack of potatoes, flat on his back.” 3. Miguel Cotto
There’s a constant tug inside the best boxers, a challenge they hear from fans, reporters or themselves.
This November 2009 bout against welterweight world champion Cotto was a real test, a fight-of-the-year-caliber challenge for Pacquiao against a true 147-pounder with majorleague skill.
Cotto couldn’t keep up in the toe-to-toe exchanges, and Pacquiao was too fast to allow Cotto to punish him to the body, and by the ninth round Cotto was bleeding from his nose. Pacquiao was battering Cotto so often by the 11th that the Puerto Rican, bleeding at the left eye, could only muster jabs.
Swollen under both eyes, and blood gushing from his left, Cotto took some more punishment in the 12th before referee Kenny Bayless decided that was enough, stopping the fight 55 seconds into the round.
The former flyweight Pacquiao was a true welterweight champion. 4. Antonio Margarito
The 2010 bout, at Cowboys Stadium in Texas, drew more than 50,000 fans and was a supreme test of might versus size. On fight night, the HBO scale had Margarito weighing 17 pounds more than Pacquiao.
Was Pacquiao taking on too much, considering he won a lightweight (135 pounds) belt in the summer of 2008? Margarito was five inches taller, his reach six inches longer.
But Pacquiao’s hand and foot speed, along with his punching power, provided the ultimate answer.
The Filipino landed more than 350 power punches in the bout.
Margarito was so beat up afterward, he was seen lying on a table with ice packs covering his head and body, telling his manager that Pacquiao was “a special fighter with a God-given talent [who] will make it difficult for any fighter to be victorious against him.”
“If that had been Mayweather in there tonight, Manny would’ve killed him,” Pacquiao publicist Fred Sternburg said. 5. Marco Antonio Barrera
Pacquiao’s impressive power won him a November 2003 HBO main event, against Mexican warrior Marco Antonio Barrera in San Antonio.
The more experienced Barrera, a former featherweight champ, had lost only one fight (a split decision) in the past five years.
But Pacquiao trounced the big favorite, dominating the second round with a flurry of heavy punches that would become familiar to fight fans in the coming decade.
Barrera went down in the third, was bloodied by a head butt later and succumbed to the onslaught in the 11th, with his corner throwing in the towel.
— Lance Pugmire