Last week, 39-year-old Katie Taylor defeated Amanda Serrano<\/a> for a third time at Madison Square Garden, bringing the greatest rivalry in women\u2019s boxing history to a close. Perhaps the most understated compliment we could pay her afterward was, \u201cShe didn\u2019t look her age.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n And this weekend?<\/p>\n Why, this weekend was a veritable geriatric renaissance! An old-fashioned blue-hair revival! Older fighters showed up like it was early-bird dinner at the Golden Corral and laid waste to the youth without regret nor conscience. Out in London, it was 38-year-old Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> straight outclassing Daniel Dubois with counters and speed and in-ring acumen. The left he dropped Dubois with to end the fight in the fifth round was a masterclass of fast-twitch muscle memory and instinct, generated from a well harnessed source of power.<\/p>\n \u201cThirty-eight is a young guy, remember!\u201d Usyk yelled into the microphone afterward, winning over Earl Court\u2019s finest quadragenarians. \u201cThirty-eight is only the start!\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n What an icon.<\/p>\n Only the start? That must explain why Manny Pacquiao, returning to the boxing ring at 46 years old to face Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight title on Saturday night, gave \u201cEl Azteca\u201d all he wanted<\/a>. The fight ended in a majority draw (!!), yet it was Pacquaio pulling away in the later rounds. He was out-foxing, out-quicking and out-gunning a fighter who was 16 years younger.<\/p>\n Scenes, baby, scenes! And think about that for a minute. When Barrios was born in 1995, Pacquiao already had facial hair and a driver\u2019s license. By comparison, when Pacquaio came into the world, \u201cThe Dukes of Hazzard\u201d was the hottest show on television.<\/p>\n Maybe the DFO line is moving. If we thought that Terence \u201cBud\u201d Crawford, who turns 38 in September, might be a little long in the tooth for his epic boxing match with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez scheduled for that same month, we might think again. If the trend continues, Crawford \u2014 who was alive in the 1980s \u2014 could very well be in a sweet spot.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cAthletes are extending their prime performance age more so than ever before,\u201d Most Valuable Promotions CEO Nakisa Bidarian posted on social media after the dust settled in the Pacquiao fight Saturday night.<\/p>\n \u201cPlus they have experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Bidarian ain\u2019t wrong. Experience is having a freaking day.<\/p>\n It was true at UFC 318 in New Orleans, too. At 39 years old, Michael Johnson was a five-to-one underdog in his fight with 26-year-old Daniel Zellhuber, the Mexican brawler who put on the Fight of the Year against Esteban Ribovics<\/a> at the Sphere last fall. When they showed Johnson in the promo before the fight, he was talking about \u201cmaking another name,\u201d which sounded like rocking-chair babble for a guy whose points are no longer all that lucid.<\/p>\n Michael Johnson reacts after a unanimous decision victory against Daniel Zellhuber at UFC 318.<\/p>\n (Cooper Neill via Getty Images)<\/p>\n So, what did Johnson do? He went out there and lit up Zellhuber for two of the three rounds, hurting him on occasion, dropping him, schooling him in the ways of \u201cexperience.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n And in the main event, when 36-year-old Dustin Poirier stood in the pocket and fired shots against 33-year-old Max Holloway, there was no sense of a dramatic drop-off. There was only the bittersweet feeling that it was all coming to an end.<\/p>\n That the Bayou-born Poirier was going out on his own terms<\/a>, one last time into the breach, right in the heart of New Orleans, whether he won or lost. It\u2019s good to get out gracefully. It\u2019s rare to get out gracefully. Yet next to some of his counterparts, Poirier was still a proverbial spring chicken.<\/p>\n Not that the young aren\u2019t holding their own if you pan back. Dakota Ditcheva, the 26-year-old phenom at PFL, reminded everyone<\/a> why she\u2019s the hottest name outside the UFC down in South Africa, defeating Sumiko Inaba from pillar-to-post (even through a broken hand). Jesse \u201cBam\u201d Rodriguez, 25, unified the WBC and WBO super flyweight titles by stopping Phumelele Cafu in the 10th<\/a>. Ilia Topuria has done more by the age of 27 than some of the most decorated fighters of our generation did in their entire careers.<\/p>\n But give it up to the mainstays, the veterans, the graying distinguished fighters who right now are defiantly staying relevant. Looking at you, Beneil Dariush. The gray on the temple is as menacing an omen as any cauliflower ear in the industry. Stephen \u201cWonderboy\u201d Thompson is the oldest fighter in the UFC at 42, and even though he lost to Gabriel Bonfim on the scorecards, he didn\u2019t really lose<\/a>. Jim Miller may go on forever. And there\u2019s no telling how old Myktybek Orolbai is \u2014 the program says he\u2019s 27, but let\u2019s just say there\u2019s a museum of natural history out there somewhere missing a warrior from its exhibit of prehistoric man.<\/p>\n Older, wiser, meaner.<\/p>\n Usyk, Pacquiao, Johnson.<\/p>\n Either the young guys are dropping off, or these guys are refusing to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know what this is? The elders putting their foot down. There\u2019s this stat that came into popular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[8685,8689,8690,2560,8686,4035,8688,8687,1666,8691,6100,8692,6101,8209,4036,101,715,56,54,55,8684],"class_list":["post-12879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-alex-pereira","tag-alexandre-pantoja","tag-amanda-serrano","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-ring","tag-daniel-dubois","tag-daniel-zellhuber","tag-dustin-poirier","tag-getty-images","tag-katie-taylor","tag-manny-pacquiao","tag-manon-fiorot","tag-mario-barrios","tag-michael-johnson","tag-oleksandr-usyk","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-valentina-shevchenko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"NEW](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/cdf68c10-6588-11f0-9dfe-d782b54ffa09.jpeg\"\/)
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