Manny Pacquiao is clearly taking his upcoming exhibition fight with DK Yoo extremely seriously. His opponent might be a YouTuber rather than a boxer but the senator is leaving nothing to chance.
Pacquiao shared a video of himself training in General Santos City. The work all appears to be on the strength and conditioning side and he can be seen running, alongside his wife, and working on his abdominal muscles.
Pacquiao might be expected to beat DK Yoo easily but he appears to be going through a proper training camp in order to prepare for the fight:
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This will be Pacquiaos’s first foray into the lucrative world of exhibition boxing. The fight clearly won’t be on anything like the scale that his professional bouts have been.
Pacquiao’s 2015 fight with Floyd Mayweather generated around $410 million in revenue with 4.6 million people purchasing the pay per view. It broke all box office records at the time.
His fights with stars like Oscar de la Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito were also huge box office successes although not on the scale of the Mayweather match. Pacquiao is used to fighting in front of tens of thousands of fans with many more watching on pay per view.
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Modest affair
So by his standards the bout with DK Yoo on December 11th will be a modest affair. It is taking place at the Korean Exhibition Centre in Seoul which supposedly has 6,000 seats but is not quite the MGM Grand Arena.
There is no word on what broadcast deals are in place although Triller appears to have purchased the rights for the contest. Pacquiao has stated that he will give the proceeds from the fight to charity although details on how this will actually work in practise are hazy.
In this contest fans might be surprised to see how much time Pacquiao has spent preparing for the fight. After all, his opponent has no previous boxing experience beyond an exhibition fight with a faded former UFC star.
But Pacquiao was always renowned for his work ethic. After a bruising and ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign he is probably just happy to be back at his old day job !
