Hall of Famer: Eight-division champion Manny Pacquiao leads IBHOF Class of 2025

By the time he agreed to a June 23, 2001, bout against Lehlo Ledwaba at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas on an Oscar De La Hoya undercard, Manny Pacquiao had already been a world champion, early cult status in his native Philippines and had compiled a 32-2 record with 24 knockouts.

Outside of the doors of Freddie Roach's Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, though, few in the U.S. or outside of Asia knew all that much about Pacquiao. By that time, I'd known Roach for close to 20 years, and he was transitioning into a role as perhaps boxing's greatest-ever trainer.

Roach always talked up his fighters, but he was laying it on thick about Pacquiao.

"Wait until you see this kid I have," Roach said to me a few days before Pacquiao was to challenge Ledwaba for the IBF super bantamweight championship on the De La Hoya-Javier Castillejo undercard.

"Good?" I asked.

"Incredible," Roach responded.

As usual, Roach was spot on, and then some. The young fighter who was so unknown in the U.S. but who had caught Roach's fancy would go on to become one of the legends of the game. Pacquiao would wind up winning championships in eight weight classes and established himself as one of the biggest stars in the history of the game.

He was compared to the greatest who ever set foot into a ring, and his promoter, Bob Arum, even used his name in the same sentence as Muhammad Ali.

So it should be no surprise that Pacquiao's name was atop the list of inductees for the International Boxing Hall of Fame's Class of 2025.

Others elected are boxers Vinny Paz, Michael Nunn, Yessica Chavez, Anne Sophie Mathis, Mary Jo Sanders and Cat Davis; referees Kenny Bayless and Harry GIbbs; cutman broadcaster/journalist Randy Gordon and broadcaster Ross Greenburg, old-timer Rodrigo Valdez and Owen Swift.

"I opened my gym, Wild Card Boxing Club, in hopes that the next Muhammad Ali would walk through the door," Roach said. "Little did I know that in 2001, my Muhammad Ali would weigh 122 pounds. His name was Manny Pacquiao and he was and still is the pride of the Philippines. For 20 years, after Manny and I first did mitts in the ring at Wild Card, we trained together for some of the biggest fights. As his collection of world championship belts grew, so did his presence in boxing and the world. 

"Today's announcement that Manny will be a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame's Class of 2025 makes me incredibly proud. As much as I loved working together with Manny all those years, I'm even happier sharing the same wall with him at the International Boxing Hall of Fame."

Since that Ledwaba fight, which he won by sixth-round TKO, Pacquiao has become one of the gigantic figures of the 21st century, both inside and outside of the ring.

"I am so happy that I have been selected to enter the International Boxing Hall of Fame," he said. "This certainly is a wonderful Christmas gift. Throughout my career, as a professional fighter and a public servant, it has been my goal to bring honor to my country, the Philippines, and my fellow Filipinos around the world. Today, I am humbled knowing that in June, I will receive boxing's highest honor, joining our national hero, Flash Elorde, as well as my trainer and friend, Freddie Roach.

"I am very grateful to those who voted for me, and I look forward to celebrating with family, friends, and fans at Induction Weekend in Canastota, N.Y."

Pacquiao was elected to the Senate and the House of Representatives in the Philippines and ran unsuccessfully for his nation's presidency in 2022. He became a singer and recorded a cover of Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch." 

He won world championships in eight classes -- flyweight, super bantamweight, featherweight, super featherweight, lightweight, super lightweight, welterweight and super welterweight -- and was lineal champion at flyweight, featherweight, super featherweight and welterweight.

He was the Boxing Writers Association's Fighter of the Year in 2006, 2008 and 2009 and was its Fighter of the Decade for 2000-2009. In 2019, at 40 he became the oldest welterweight champion in history when he defeated Keith Thurman.

He and heavyweight George Foreman are the only boxers to win world titles 20 years or more apart.

Along with Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya, Pacquiao is one of the four greatest stars of the pay-per-view era.

His 2015 bout with Mayweather in Las Vegas holds records for largest gate, at $72 million, and most pay-per-view sales, at 4.6 million.

The overwhelming majority of his PPV bouts were incredibly exciting and action-packed, and he fought all of the biggest stars of his era. He has a 12-4-1 against boxers who are already in the boxing Hall of Fame. He was 0-1 against Mayweather, 2-1 against Erik Morales, 2-0 against Marco Antonio Barrera, 2-1-1 against Juan Manuel Marquez, 2-1 against Timothy Bradley, and 1-0 against De La Hoya, Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley and Ricky Hatton.