{"id":483574,"date":"2026-02-18T18:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483574\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:44:14","slug":"manny-pacquiao-vs-ruslan-provodnikov-exhibition-boxing-fight-date-location-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483574\/","title":{"rendered":"Manny Pacquiao vs. Ruslan Provodnikov Exhibition Boxing Fight Date, Location Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

After returning to the boxing ring in 2025 for his first professional bout in four years, Manny Pacquiao is going to put his gloves back on for an exhibition fight this spring. <\/p>\n

Ring Magazine announced on Wednesday that Pacquiao will take on Ruslan Provodnikov in a 10-round exhibition on April 18 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n

“Returning to Las Vegas means so much to me, and I’m excited to work with a team focused on creating a world-class experience for the fans,” Pacquiao\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in a statement included in the announcement. “I’m coming back to give them a great fight\u2014and I’m ready.”<\/p>\n

Pacquiao fought Mario Barrios to a majority draw in July, marking his first professional bout since 2021. He did have an exhibition match in between, against K-1 super lightweight champion Rukiya Anpo in July 2024.<\/p>\n

Speaking to ESPN’s\u00a0Andreas Hale<\/a>\u00a0leading up to the match with Barrios, Pacquiao explained his motivation to return to pro competition after retiring in 2021.<\/p>\n

“I’m coming back because boxing is my passion,” Pacquiao said. “It’s all I think about, and I really like to make history.”<\/p>\n

Pacquiao, who turned 47 on Dec. 17, hasn’t won a professional bout since defeating Keith Thurman in 2019. He is unbeaten in his three exhibition bouts, with two of them coming since 2022.<\/p>\n

The bout with Anpo wasn’t scored since there were no judges, though there was\u00a0little doubt<\/a>\u00a0that Anpo was on a different level than Pacquiao over the course of the three rounds.<\/p>\n

Provodnikov will be making his return to competition after a 10-year absence. The Russian standout went 25-5 with 18 knockouts in his professional career. His last match was a unanimous decision loss against John Molina Jr. in June 2016. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After returning to the boxing ring in 2025 for his first professional bout in four years, Manny Pacquiao…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-483574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}