Manny Pacquiao’s next fight will take place on December 11th in Seoul. It will be the boxing legend’s first time participating in an exhibition bout and he is set to take on Korean YouTuber DK Yoo.
The fight has been in the works for several months but this is the first time that the date and location has been confirmed:
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Full statement
Pacquiao’s statement in full is,
“Hello everyone I would like to invite you to watch the upcoming fight on December 11th, the exhibition match with DK Yoo in Korea. I hope you are all going to watch this fight, it’s going to be fun and I will make sure everybody will be happy and will enjoy this bout.”
Confusingly the official poster states that the exhibition match will take place on December 10th. Perhaps this means it will be held on Sunday morning (local time) in order to accommodate the Saturday night pay per view audience in he US.
During his prime opponents certainly did not enjoy sharing the ring with Manny Pacquiao. He stopped the likes of Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton, Oscar De La Hoya and Érik Morales.
But Pacquiao has long since retired from professional boxing even though he clearly keeps in good shape:
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Political commitments
The 43 year old is a senator in the Philippines and recently stood in the presidential elections, although he finished a distant third. Pacquiao has been very successful in politics but it is the sport of boxing in which he made his name and his fortune.
Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to win twelve major world titles in eight different weight divisions. He won the WBC flyweight title in 1998, his first world title, and won the WBA welterweight title in 2019, his final belt.
After over two decades at the top of the sport Pacquiao decided to hang up his gloves for good and announced his retirement last year in the buildup to the presidential election. But, as the likes of Roy Jones Jnr, Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather have shown there is still plenty of money to be made by retired boxers in exhibition bouts.
Mayweather is facing Mikuru Asakura in Tokyo at Super Rizin on Sunday, his second exhibition bout in Japan. Perhaps Pacquiao will participate more regularly in these contests, after all he could be running short of cash after reportedly spending 129 million pesos (6.4mn USD) on his election campaign!
