It’s like Manny Pacquiao never left.
Mere days into the training camp for his questionable comeback and July fight with Mario Barrios, Pacquiao seems to have a swarm of videographers following him wherever he goes. He is 46 years old now, and will almost surely look it in the ring against Barrios, 30. But people can’t get enough of Manny.
FightHype published a video on Friday in which a pack of content creators coalesced around Pacquiao to ask him about Terence Crawford’s September 13 super middleweight fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. (Those are about all the details organizers seem to have about that fight at the moment.)
Pacquiao looked fairly uninterested, seeming more eager to take a picture with a fan than to provide answers to the media. Still, the group got off a few questions. What advice did Pacquiao, as a veteran weight-class-jumper himself, have for the smaller Crawford?
“Make sure [to] focus on speed,” Pacquiao said. “That’s a problem when you’re moving up, your speed and power.”
Not for Pacquiao, it wasn’t. Despite starting his career as a malnourished flyweight, Pacquiao had world-level success across eight weight classes – and did so with an aggressive style. Though Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito had huge size advantages over him, Pacquiao was the aggressor in those fights, flitting in and out like a bloodlusted hummingbird and lighting up his opponents with fast combinations.
Still, his point is well taken. Pacquiao did stop scoring knockouts eventually, and speed in the ring is crucial not only on offense but to avoid the bigger man’s blows in return.
By the end of the video, Pacquiao had his team and the camera-toters in stitches. He hasn’t lost his jolly nature, his sense of humor or his generosity with fans. What he probably has lost is the speed and power he talked about moments earlier.
Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector Media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on and can be contacted at [email protected].