Boxing career of Manny Pacquiao

Manny Pacquiao competed in professional boxing from 1995 to 2025. Regarded by boxing historians as one of the greatest professional boxers of all time, Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to win twelve world titles in eight different weight divisions. He won the lineal championship in four different weight classes (flyweight, featherweight, super featherweight, and light welterweight), as well as being the first boxer in history to win major world titles in four of the original eight weight divisions of boxing, also known as the "glamour divisions": flyweight, featherweight, lightweight, and welterweight. In June 2025, Pacquiao was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, becoming the third Filipino boxer to receive the honor.

In July 2019, Pacquiao became the oldest welterweight world champion in history at the age of 40, and the first boxer to become a recognized four-time welterweight champion after defeating Keith Thurman to win the WBA (Super) welterweight title. Pacquiao also holds the record of being the only boxer to hold world titles in four different decades, in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s.

He was named Fighter of the Decade for the 2000s by the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA), WBC, WBO and HBO. He is also a three-time Ring magazine, ESPN and BWAA Fighter of the Year, winning both awards in 2006, 2008 and 2009; and the Best Fighter ESPY Award in 2009 and 2011. In 2016, Pacquiao was ranked second on ESPN's list of top boxers, pound-for-pound, of the past 25 years.

Boxing historian Bert Sugar ranked Pacquiao as the greatest southpaw fighter of all time. Spanish media outlet Marca placed Pacquiao 16th on their Greatest Sportsmen of the 21st Century list. In 2021, Pacquiao held the top spot in DAZN's list of the top 10 boxers of the previous 30 years and as of 2022, he was ranked ninth in The Ring's list of the top 100 boxers of all time. As of April 2025, BoxRec ranks Pacquiao as the greatest Asian professional boxer of all time.

Pacquiao was long rated as the best active boxer in the world, pound-for-pound, by most sporting news and boxing websites, including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Sporting Life, Yahoo! Sports, About.com, BoxRec and The Ring, beginning from his climb to lightweight until his losses at welterweight in 2012. He was also the longest reigning top-ten active boxer on The Ring's pound-for-pound list.

Pacquiao has generated approximately 20.4 million total pay-per-view (PPV) buys and $1.29 billion in revenue from his 26 PPV bouts. His highly anticipated bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the highest grossing PPV event in history, generating a record-breaking 4.6 million buys. According to Forbes, he was the second highest paid athlete in the world in 2015.