Manny Pacquiao hopes to avenge his most famous defeat when he meets with Floyd Mayweather for a second time, 11 years on from their initial encounter. Although, when reflecting on their first fight, ‘Pac Man’ spoke with disappointment.
Back in 2015, Mayweather held the unified WBC and WBA welterweight world titles, whilst Pacquiao held the WBO crown, with the lure of a three-belt unification being enough to finally force the pound-for-pound stars to square-off after years of encouragement.
In the fight, Mayweather landed the cleaner work throughout and delivered a disciplined, controlled display to claim a relatively wide unanimous decision victory on the scorecards – arguably the best win of his legendary career.
However, in an interview with All The Smoke Fight, Pacquiao revealed that he still believes that he won the fight due to the volume of punches that he threw, compared to ‘TBE’.
“Right after the fight, I went to the hospital and got operated [on] my shoulder. It really hurt.
“His style, I knew it, but the thing is – I review. I am expecting that I won the fight because he didn’t throw a lot of punches, I throw a lot of punches.
“I reviewed the Compubox [numbers] like slow-motion from first round to round 12, [checking] how many punches connected, how many punches he connected with, that is boxing.
“I am not complaining or making [excuses]. It happened that way. It happened to me many times.”
Compubox reported that Pacquiao threw and landed less punches than Mayweather, scoring with 19% of his shots and being far less efficient than the victor, who connected with 148 of 435 thrown blows (34%), although those figures remain disputed.
Mayweather-Pacquiao II takes place on Saturday, September 19, at The Sphere in Las Vegas, with the fight being available to watch live on Netflix.
