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By Howard Chua-Eoan

I SHOULDN’T be so chagrined that Manny Pacquiao is re-entering a Las Vegas boxing ring this weekend for a professional fight at the age of 46. After all, I recently wrote a meditation on persevering through the ravages of age and physical decline. I’ve admired Pacquiao for years and trailed him around New York City for a Time magazine cover story in 2009. He was the most recognizable Filipino on earth at the time, a distinction that everyone from the islands — where I was born — was proud.

And there was so much to be proud of. Born into extreme poverty on the island of Mindanao, he was — at the height of his career — a whirlwind of prowess and prosperity, with the relentless voracity of the videogame that became his nickname: Pac-Man. One estimate has his net worth at more than $200 million, out of earnings from the sport and endorsements as high as half-a-billion dollars. His 2015 battle with nemesis Floyd Mayweather, Jr. still holds the record for most pay-per-view sales: 4.6 million. He is literally pound-for-pound the greatest pugilist of our time: the only boxer in history to hold championships in eight different weight classes. When I reported on him in 2009, he’d already won six and was preparing to win his seventh — in the welterweight division. That was 40 pounds (640 ounces, or 18.1 kilograms) heavier than the 107-pound flyweight class he began his career with 11 years before. He claimed the eighth — the super welterweight, which has a top limit of 154 pounds — in 2019 when he was 40 years old.

So why should I be vexed by his return to the ring at 46?

It’s not really about age. In 1994, a 45-year-old George Foreman retook the heavyweight championship — which he first won in 1973 — by defeating 26-year-old Michael Moorer. Pacquiao — who had retired at the end of 2021 —will be facing Mexican-American Mario Barrios, who is 30, for a fresh chance at the welterweight crown. If he wins, he’ll be the oldest ever to hold it. And if he does, will he then aim for the overall boxing record set by Bernard Hopkins, Jr., who won a heavyweight title at the age of 49? As a sexagenarian, I’m all for aging underdogs getting the upper hand.

I’m wary because there’s more than a hint of desperation about this — the kind of emotion that shouldn’t cling to such an illustrious career. From 2010 to earlier this year, Pacquiao was also one of the most famous politicians in the Philippines, serving as congressman and then senator. He even ran for president in 2022. He’d been drawn to politics long before then: It was practically a traditional career move for the nation’s successful actors, singers, athletes, and businesspeople. He won a lot of votes, but he wasn’t particularly good at politics, swinging from one alliance to another without any real benefit, pounded by critics from all sides for his unfamiliarity with bureaucracy and backroom machinations, committing avoidable gaffe after gaffe. His celebrity and active boxing career for much of this period also made him an absentee legislator — a record that probably doomed his run for the presidency and certainly his shot for a second senate term in May of this year. A few days after that last campaign, he announced he was coming out of retirement to fight Barrios.

Since then, there’s been enough melodrama to qualify for a Rocky sequel. As he prepared for the Barrios bout, his son Jimuel told him that he too was going to be a pro boxer. That stunned Pacquiao, who slugged his way from destitution to riches to be able to send his kids to the best schools. He didn’t want to see them struggle the way he did. At first, Jimuel’s debut fight was going to be a warmup to his father’s match. But Pacquiao last week said he didn’t want the distraction of seeing his eldest son duke it out before he himself stepped into the ring, postponing his kid’s bout until September or October.

Meanwhile, Freddy Roach — the trainer whose acumen helped establish Pacquiao’s long reign as a lord of the ring — has rejoined the boxer. There’d been a couple of years of estrangement after he was summarily dismissed in the wake of a 2018 defeat. The relationship is particularly poignant. In 2010, Pacquiao’s opponent Antonio Margarito mocked Roach, who has Parkinson’s disease. The punishment the Filipino meted out in revenge is legendary. Margarito lost practically every round and was hospitalized afterward for facial surgery. In 2013, Brandon Rios also made fun of Roach; Pacquiao sent him packing after a unanimous decision.

Ironically, Roach has always been cautious about Pacquiao’s fights. Even in 2009, he was saying the boxer only had two or three more fights left in him. He went on to battle 17 more times. But age was already catching up with Pacquiao. Mayweather may have won his epic match against Pacquiao by playing hard-to-get; by the time they eventually touched gloves, both men were past their primes, but Pacquiao was more past than Mayweather. He lost by unanimous decision. The Filipino seemed even less agile in 2021 when he lost to Yordenis Ugas, the defeat that prompted his retirement.

The likelihood is that Pacquiao — win or lose — will take home about $5 million from this match.* That’s chump change to the boxing legend. Pacquiao told Roach it’s about history, not money. “‘I just have one more time in me,’” the trainer quotes the fighter as saying. “‘I just want to show the world that I was for real and I am for real.’”

Everyone knows that, Manny. I’ll be rooting for you come Saturday in Vegas. But how much history can one person make before becoming history in the wrong way?

BLOOMBERG OPINION

*Barrios’ take home is probably much smaller — $1 million or so — because Pacquiao is the draw.