Who Truly Won The Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Fight

Who Truly Won The Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Fight May 5, 2015

If I’m honest, I’m not a huge boxing fan so I didn’t catch the fight (but it unanimously seemed by everyone else’s opinion that I saved myself $100). But regardless it was hard to not be inundated with news feed posts, tweets, and all around internet hysteria for the 24-48 hours surrounding the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight. The interesting thing about it all is I didn’t watch the fight, but from the internet sphere I saw a clear winner. (Now of course I’m not talking in the strict boxing sense of the word, because Floyd won and from specialists I’ve seen on ESPN and such, even though it was a “boring” fight he is arguably the greatest boxer of our generation). But…

Pacquiao is humble, classy, and all around solid guy. Floyd however, when he’s in the news, it’s usually for ego trips, ridiculous spending, or even worse multiple domestic abuse charges and allegations.

Pacquiao loves his family, kids, and marriage.

It’s hard because I don’t want to just critique a man who I’ve never met, but at the same time when a life is public, actions are public, and when those actions affect the public, then it’s hard not to address it.

I think Laila Ali (Muhammed Ali’s daughter) shared it best, when asked about Floyd she said, “I see a broken person. And I know when you have money and you have ‘power’ and you have all these ‘yes’ people around you, sometimes you don’t have that person to really pull you aside and give it to you straight. I dislike the way he acts, I dislike the way he treats people and I’m obviously not down with his beating up on women. Because that’s very cowardly.”

She sees a broken person. Floyd’s idea of masculinity is broken. It’s heavily defined by macho, by false power, by aggression, by money. When things like service, sacrifice, humility, according to Jesus, make us human.

When it’s all said and done I’m not going to look up to Floyd. I’m not going to point my future sons to his example. But I will point them to Manny’s. To someone who is kind, gracious, gentle, puts family above his job, and someone who just emanates with Jesus. If you want to see someone worth looking up to, don’t look at them when they win, look at them when they lose. How they lose tells me more about them than how they win. Manny lost with class and respect. He’s creating good. He’s creating ripples in the world. And he’s leaving a legacy worth remembering.

 


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