Manny actually took more punishment in the first Morales fight. More so than Morales actually. And he was just in a war with Barrera and Marquez before that. Pacquiao is the only fighter in boxing history who according to the fans can just recover through war after war like nothing ever happened to his body.
Like I wrote, no one is ever fair when it comes to Pacman and H2H vs past greats, hell even current ones. A lil asian dude could never...! lmao
Manny is pretty respected greatness wise. Everybody except the irrational haters have him near or inside the top 20 ATG. But when it comes to fantasy H2H fights he gets little to no respect at all. Despite the fact that he has beaten Marquez, Morales, Barrera and Cotto. I would understand a little if he lost to them all or never fought them. But I'm sitting here like well those fights happened. People just gonna pretend they never happened?
It's odd when you see threads about Pacs H2H prowess you expect to hear about his destruction of Cotto and Barrera. But there's never a peep about that. It's always "Pac too basic". But then whenever you see a Marvin Hagler fantasy H2H fight it turns into 10 pages of everybody jizzing themselves over Hagler knocking out Hearns. And how unbeatable that makes him. I just lol.
Its funny, people quickly forget that he was the underdog or considered dead even at best with many of his opp during his rise and peak… People just forget because they looked like they didn’t belong in the ring with him on fight night… Hard not to think many of these H2H historical match ups wouldn’t end up the same way…
Seems like 12 years ago the consensus was Pryor. And then, I might be inclined to agree. But now., I think Manny. Pryor had a tendency to be dropped and be more sloppy than Pac. Especially when it gets heated. I think the more proven and better boxing in Pac would survive some scary moments on to a win.
The Manny of the Hatton or Cotto fight beats any version of the Hawk. The Floyd who dismantled Gatti beats any version of the Hawk. Both great hypotheticals. I think the Manny fight would have more action.