{"id":507966,"date":"2026-03-01T19:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T19:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/507966\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T19:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T19:35:07","slug":"world-champion-says-manny-pacquiao-avoided-him-due-to-fear-of-being-kod-he-would-get-flatlined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/507966\/","title":{"rendered":"World champion says Manny Pacquiao avoided him due to fear of being KO’d: “He would get flatlined”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manny Pacquiao<\/a> has been accused of avoiding a world champion who, if they ever happen to meet in the ring, believes the Filipino legend would get \u2018flatlined\u2019.<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old returned from a near four-year hiatus in July, with many feeling he had done enough to dethrone Mario Barrios<\/a>, the then-WBC welterweight champion, in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

With their closely-contested encounter ending in a draw, though, Pacquiao was ultimately unable to enhance his legacy as an eight-division world champion.<\/p>\n

It has now been announced that he is set for a rematch with Floyd Mayweather in September<\/a>, having initially been linked to a battle against Rolando Romero, who was elevated from \u2018regular\u2019 to full WBA champion last year.<\/p>\n

Romero initially claimed the secondary belt with a unanimous decision victory over Ryan Garcia, who suffered a second-round knockdown during their one-sided showdown in May.<\/p>\n

But while Romero has been called out by several operators at 147lbs, including Conor Benn, he is still yet to make a maiden defence of his WBA title.<\/p>\n

This, he claims, is because fighters such as Pacquiao, Benn and even Garcia, who dethroned Barrios for the WBC title last week, have been actively avoiding him.<\/p>\n

Speaking with K.O. Artist Sports<\/a>, the 30-year-old expressed his frustration, naming Pacquiao as one of the culprits for him not landing a meaningful opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s crazy how avoided I am right now. I had [however] many fights lined up, and they [his potential opponents] all pulled out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got Ryan [Garcia], who\u2019s obviously scared of me. We\u2019ve got Manny [Pacquiao], who doesn\u2019t want to get flatlined. And we\u2019ve got \u2018Slim Shady\u2019 [Benn] who doesn\u2019t want anything to do with me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romero does, of course, have a mandatory challenger in the form of Shakhram Giyasov, who has been waiting patiently for his world title shot.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of last year, the Uzbek\u2019s manager Vadim Kornilov revealed that they are awaiting a purse bid, believing the WBA has dragged this process on long enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manny Pacquiao has been accused of avoiding a world champion who, if they ever happen to meet in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-507966","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\/507966","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=507966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}