Manny Pacquiao on his love for the UAE, entering the Hall of Fame, Mayweather and comeback plans

Filipino legend to open a boxing academy in Dubai and aims to fight for welterweight title this year

Manny Pacquiao is looking at a poster celebrating his upcoming induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. “I cannot imagine how far that I have come,” he says quietly.

Pacquiao’s English has improved markedly over the years, but words aren’t really necessary.

The grin creeping across his face and the prideful smiling eyes of the fighting senator from Sarangani Province in the Philippines reveal precisely how he feels about this latest accolade.

Such is the enormity and historical significance of Pacquiao’s achievements it is not hyperbole to suggest he can lay claim to three hall of fame careers in one – and has already packed enough into his 46 years for three lifetimes.

There was a destitute child afflicted by malnutrition before there was a beloved eight-division champion, who used his popularity as a platform for political office and became one of the most famous faces on the planet.

“I'm so honoured and grateful for them choosing me as a hall of famer,” Pacquiao tells The National in Dubai. “I'm so thrilled and amazed by my accomplishments in boxing. I never imagined that I'll be one of the hall of famers, so it's God's blessings to me that – where I came from and what I have done – are beyond even my own imagination when I started boxing.”

Dubai has become Pacquiao’s second home. An Emirates ID has been slotted into his wallet and a newly acquired golden visa ensures he can come and go as he pleases.

This year he plans to open a boxing academy in the emirate, while there are further business dealings, too. Gems Education has been approached to manage the network of schools he has built in the Philippines.

Last November he put on a show for thousands of fans at Global Village before returning to take in the New Year celebrations at Burj Khalifa.

A baseball cap might offer some disguise for incognito morning runs along Marasi Drive, but back in the lobby of his Business Bay hotel a large pair of mirrored aviators prove less effective as he prepares to discuss his big ideas for 2025.

“My plan is to put up a Manny Pacquiao sports academy, a Manny Pacquiao boxing academy. So that's our plan and we're about to start the business,” he says. “I like Dubai because it's fresh. I mean, the place is so nice and well-developed, it’s one of the fastest-growing nations in the world. So, it's nice to share my talents and my knowledge about sports with the younger generation.”

The UAE is never far from his thoughts. While Pacquiao is set to take his place in the hall of fame this summer, if it is up to him, his career will have one final flourish.

A fight with the WBC welterweight champion Mario Barrios – 17 years his junior – is being targeted for late July. Las Vegas is the logical destination but Pacquiao says the UAE is also in the running.

“We are working right now, probably after this week we can finalise everything for the fight here in Abu Dhabi,” he says. “We are still negotiating. We were planning to fight in the United States in July but why not here? Bring him here.

“It's going to be the third week of July in Abu Dhabi for a world championship. We have had talks with his promoter.”

Should Pacquiao return to the ring for the first time since 2021 then it would take his record-breaking career into a 30th year having debuted, aged 16, back in 1995.

It’s astonishing to think he had already boxed 40 times, amassing a 37-2-1 record and winning world titles in two weight classes, before the fight that changed his life.

“I fought with [Marco Antonio] Barrera in San Antonio, Texas, in the Alamodome,” he recalls. “It was way back in 2003 and when I entered the arena it’s like I have no fans. Everybody was shouting for Barrera because at that time he was pound-for-pound [best boxer].

“He'd just beaten ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed and had three belts, four belts including the The Ring magazine title. So, the odds is like, a big difference. But the thing is, they don't really know me at that time.

“I think that [was me at my best]. For 12 rounds I feel like the first round. I don't get tired even after 12 rounds, more, another 12 rounds. I can fight. I can still fight.

“Amazingly, like punishing myself in that training … Every day I did 36 rounds, 36 rounds every day and the fight is 12 rounds. That's why, if you look at the fight, non-stop throwing punches to him and he got tired.

“My trainer Freddie Roach, he put money, $10,000, and he won $80,000 because he knows how I trained.”

After collecting Barrera’s prized scalp, Pacquiao began what seemed like a personal feud with the elite of Mexican boxing in a golden period at super featherweight.

“There's a lot of Mexican fighters and most of my opponents were Mexican, so that's why I learnt to speak Spanish,” he says. “I told them that it's not my intention to fight all of them, Mexican boxers, but it just happened that way because we are the same weight. I am just doing my job.”

Defeat to Erik Morales in March 2005 – a result he emphatically avenged twice – interrupted his hot streak, but that would be the last time he’d lose for more than seven years.

“Morales 1 was a classic fight,” he says. “I lost the first one because I suffered a head cut, a big cut in the third or fourth round, and it was hard to see my opponent so I lost the decision. But I said to my team and [promoter] Bob Arum to get me a rematch because I'm going to get my revenge – and I did.”

That run included a transcendent triumph over Oscar De La Hoya up at welterweight. If beating Barrera lit the fuse, then pulverising the ‘Golden Boy’ into retirement saw his career explode.

“Bob Arum asked me if I wanted to fight De La Hoya. I said to give me a few days to think about it. Like I said, I am studying the style of my opponents,” he says.

“De La Hoya is big. So, after a few days I call Bob up and say I will fight De La Hoya. From 135 [pounds] moving up to 147, so you can imagine, so big.

“No problem because I studied his style. What I did in the ring is exactly what I am thinking [would happen]. He is big, no need to stay in front of him. Step side to side, head movement and counter punching, everything. That is boxing.”

It was at that point that demand for a showdown with Floyd Mayweather gathered steam. Mayweather eked past De La Hoya on the cards, Pacquiao retired him in eight rounds. Ricky Hatton took Mayweather 10 rounds, Pacquiao annihilated him in two.

The welterweight rivals would occupy the top spots on the pound-for-pound list for years to come but Mayweather proved as elusive at the negotiating table as he was in the ring.

As it transpired, Pacquiao’s winning run was halted by a scandalous set of scorecards against Tim Bradley before his true nemesis, Juan Manuel Marquez, handed him the most violent defeat of his career.

With Pacquiao leading their series 2-0, alongside one draw, Marquez landed the punch of a lifetime to deliver a chilling knockout in their fourth meeting in December 2012.

Asked why Marquez was always a tricky opponent, Pacquiao says: “He is a counter-puncher, but for me it's not really that difficult. It just happened that we have not only a trilogy but fought four times and they were all great fights, and also I asked for the fifth and then Marquez didn't want to fight any more.

“I think he fought with Bradley after that but he didn’t want to fight with me again. And it’s because he won that fight by a lucky shot. I was about to finish him in that fight, in the sixth round.”

Knocked out heavily and with his legacy already secured, Pacquiao was implored to retire.

But he says: “When I lost in that fight, I'm not discouraged, I'm not disappointed or low in myself. I'm just getting inspiration to stand back [up] and fight back and study where I'm lacking for something. I'm studying, because in my boxing career, and in my life, I make boxing a science.

“Boxing is such a difficult sport and a hard sport, but I make it easier. I study it properly. That's why I'm able to capture eight different divisions [despite] my size and my weight.

“It’s because of studying about boxing. I studied all the styles of boxing, everybody. I learnt that in boxing 40 per cent is skill and 60 per cent is [mental]. In the actual fight in the ring you have to have a quick analysis, everything in a split second.

“Physical, you can develop your footwork, you can develop your head movements, your punching. [But] what punches does my opponent not know? He knows everything, all the punches. But the thing is how you execute and how you prepare your mind’s condition. That's it. That is boxing.”

If defeat to Marquez was hazardous to Pacquiao’s health it proved beneficial to his bank balance as Mayweather finally agreed terms some five years after a fight had first been mandated.

Their rivalry was consummated in May 2015 as the pair delivered what was the highest-grossing fight in history but an epic flop inside the ring.

Pacquiao was blamed for failing to force the action, but it has since emerged he was injured. Despite the consensus being to the contrary, he maintains that he won the fight.

Asked if it would have gone differently had it happened in 2010, Pacquiao says: “Even in that year, 2014 or 2015, no problem to me, it just happened that during my training I injured my shoulder.

“It really hurt, like an injury where I cannot raise my hands. It was a rotator cuff, the nerves … so no strength and no power.

“That was less than two weeks before the fight. Can you imagine? The tickets sold out, everything is ready, all of the media went to Las Vegas already, [from] all over the world, even the smallest station of TV went to Las Vegas.

“It was the first time that it happened like that. The tickets are sold out, I don't want to disappoint all the fans, all the media, the press. The fans are already in Vegas.

“But even though I have an injury, if we review the fight, if you review the fight, slow motion and count every hit – I'm still leading the fight. If you review, because I did, review every punch, every punch that connected to him and to me, I won by two rounds.”

Pacquiao went back to work, competing with the next generation of fighters at 147lbs. He wrapped up and won a trilogy with Bradley, regained a welterweight belt against Jessie Vargas before losing it to Jeff Horn, and then outclassed Lucas Matthysse and Adrien Broner.

In 2019, at 40, he was a champion again when he upset the previously unbeaten Keith Thurman – 10 years younger than him – for the WBA crown.

“I was just teaching him a lesson,” Pacquiao laughs. “I told him, you are the student and I am the professor. I want to teach you. He was a champion and younger than me but it depends on how you train and how you prepare.”

Two years later he lost to Yordenis Ugas in a fashion that suggests it might be unwise to fight again at the championship level, but even the greats, and perhaps especially the greats, find it hard to walk away. After all, it’s that same unrelenting mindset that made them great in the first place.

Boxing might be a brutal and at times ugly endeavour, but there is beauty in how it can lift up underdogs. Pacquiao is the ultimate underdog. He wouldn’t be the same without boxing, and boxing wouldn’t be the same without him.

“I think what I am most proud of is that I give inspiration to the younger generation. I am sure. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of them,” he says. “That’s the accomplishment that even when you are gone, they will remember you.

“The position [you reach] or whatever, people will forget it. But what you give to the people, and if you inspire them, they will never forget you. That’s a legacy you one day leave in this world.”