{"id":548297,"date":"2026-03-20T04:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T04:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548297\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T04:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T04:57:07","slug":"pacquiao-sparring-partner-for-barrios-fight-honestly-predicts-mayweather-rematch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548297\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacquiao sparring partner for Barrios fight honestly predicts Mayweather rematch"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unbeaten contender who helped Manny Pacquiao<\/a> prepare for Mario Barrios has offered his take on the Filipino\u2019s rematch with Floyd Mayweather.<\/p>\n

Over a decade removed from their first encounter, the two pound-for-pound greats will square off at the Sphere, Las Vegas, on September 19.<\/p>\n

As expected, many are favouring the technical brilliance and defensive mastery of Mayweather, especially given the convincing nature of his points victory over \u2018Pac Man\u2019 in 2015.<\/p>\n

At the age of 49, though, it remains to be seen whether the five-weight world champion is capable of producing a similarly impressive performance.<\/p>\n

As for Pacquiao, it could be said that he exceeded the majority of expectations when he fought to a controversial draw with Barrios<\/a> last July.<\/p>\n

Back then, Barrios was the defending WBC world welterweight champion, yet Pacquiao gave him all he could handle and arguably deserved to emerge victorious.<\/p>\n

One man who shared multiple rounds with the eight-weight world champion during that camp is lightweight prospect Samuel Contreras, who gave the 47-year-old a slight edge against Mayweather in his interview with FightHype<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019ll be a good fight \u2013 they\u2019re around the same age. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing that, and hopefully I\u2019m in [Pacquiao\u2019s] camp again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would go for Manny, not just because I was in camp with him; I just really like how he fights, how [much of] a smart fighter he is and how [much of] a hard worker he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to facing Barrios, Pacquiao had not fought professionally since 2021, back when he lost a unanimous decision to Yordenis Ugas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mayweather\u2019s last professional outing, meanwhile, could hardly be considered a credible fight, given that it ended with a 10th-round finish over Conor McGregor in 2017.<\/p>\n

Before that, the American defeated Andre Berto by unanimous decision and is now gearing up to put his 50-0 (27 KOs) record on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unbeaten contender who helped Manny Pacquiao prepare for Mario Barrios has offered his take on the Filipino\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-548297","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\/548297","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=548297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}