Manny Pacquiao Reveals The One Opponent Who Gave Him His Hardest Fight
Manny Pacquiao has revealed the one opponent who gave him his toughest fight in boxing, and he shunned Floyd Mayweather — one of his career rivals — when providing his answer.
The Filipino fighting icon rampaged his way through multiple weight classes, sharing the ring with a plethora of all-time great boxers, to put a stamp on a Hall-of-Fame resume. The International Boxing Hall of Fame, of which GIVEMESPORT’s combat editor and reporter Alan Dawson is a voting member, enshrines Pacquiao into its hall this summer, around the same time he’ll return to the ring, aged 46, to attempt to wrest the WBC welterweight world championship from Mario Barrios’s waist.
| Manny Pacquiao & Mario Barrios’ professional boxing records (as of 22/05/25) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Manny Pacquiao | Mario Barrios | |
| Fights | 72 | 32 |
| Wins | 62 | 29 |
| Losses | 8 | 2 |
| Draws | 2 | 1 |
Had Pacquiao fought Barrios in his prime, he would have no doubt dispatched of him with ease, having beaten the likes of Erik Morales, Juan Manual Marquez, Marco Antonio Barrera, Oscar de la Hoya, and Ricky Hatton, among others. But, as Pacquiao said this week, there is one fighter in particular who he believes gave him all kinds of hell.
Manny Pacquiao’s Toughest Test
Hall-of-Fame fighter reveals trickets opponent he fought
Describing his ability to box as “a gift from God,” Pacquiao told reporters, including Elie Seckbach and Fight Hype, when training in Los Angeles, that “the bigger one,” meaning Antonio Margarito, was his hardest fight.
Renowned for an aggressive, pressure-style of fighting, and his durability, Margarito had beaten Joshua Clottey and Miguel Cotto leading up to his fight with Pacquiao.
Picking Margarito as his toughest test is perhaps a surprising pick considering his wars with numerous Mexican legends, and trying to figure out the technical prowess of Mayweather, yet Margarito, at 5-foot-11 and being so much bigger than Pacquiao as a junior middleweight, meant Manny had to negate his opponent’s size.
There was also an added mental test, as Pacquiao was incensed at the time by Margarito’s apparent mocking of Pacquiao’s beloved long-time trainer Freddie Roach, who has Parkinson’s disease. Margarito was seen on video impersonating Roach by shaking his hands while he had a crick in his neck. This never sat well with Pacquiao, who inflicted a brutal beating of Margarito in the ring, and injured his eye so badly that it took a long while to recover from the damage.
That was almost 15 years ago. Pacquiao returns to the ring in July against Barrios atop a PBC on Prime Video PPV event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
