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Manny Pacquiao vs. Yordenis Ugas: First Look Highlights | PBC ON FOX

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Manny Pacquiao walked into T-Mobile Arena as a legend chasing one more miracle — and walked out having lost to a man who wasn’t even supposed to be there.

On August 21, 2021, Yordenis Ugás pulled off one of the biggest upsets in recent welterweight history, outboxing Pacquiao over 12 rounds at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to retain his WBA (Super) welterweight title. Ugás had been handed the assignment on just 11 days’ notice after Errol Spence Jr., the unified welterweight champion originally booked to face Pacquiao, withdrew with a torn retina. PBC on FOX’s first-look highlights package captures the fight that resulted — a night that may have closed the book on Pacquiao’s storied career.

• Yordenis Ugás won by unanimous decision, with scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 115-113 across all three judges.
• Ugás stepped in on 11 days’ notice after Errol Spence Jr. withdrew from the bout due to a retinal tear.
• 17,438 fans packed T-Mobile Arena to watch the 35-year-old Cuban dethrone the 42-year-old Filipino icon.

A Late-Notice Fighter Who Was Ready Anyway

Ugás wasn’t supposed to headline this card. He was elevated to the WBA’s “Super” champion designation back in January 2021 while Pacquiao held the largely ceremonial “champion in recess” status — a technicality that suddenly mattered a great deal once Spence’s eye injury forced a change of plans. Rather than treat the opportunity as a paycheck, Ugás built a fight plan specifically to beat Pacquiao’s style, leaning on his height and reach advantage to keep the smaller man on the outside.

That plan showed up immediately in the way Ugás fought behind a high guard, refusing to get drawn into the kind of close-range exchanges that have fueled Pacquiao’s career-long highlight reel. Instead, Ugás worked behind a consistent lead left jab, using it to measure distance before following with heavy overhand rights that found Pacquiao’s face again and again.

Jabs, Overhand Rights and Swelling Eyes

Pacquiao still threw in his trademark flurries, darting in with combinations the way he has for two decades, but volume wasn’t enough against Ugás’s precision. Round after round, Ugás’s overhand right landed clean, and by the midpoint of the fight visible swelling had formed around Pacquiao’s eyes — a clear sign the Cuban’s power shots were doing damage that Pacquiao’s activity couldn’t offset on the scorecards.

“I told you, I am the champion of the WBA and I showed it tonight.”

That was Ugás’s message afterward, and it wasn’t hollow bravado — all three judges saw the fight the same way, with margins of four points on two cards and two points on the third. It was the kind of clean sweep that leaves little room for argument about who controlled the pace and the exchanges.

Pacquiao’s Own Admission

Pacquiao didn’t dispute the outcome. He acknowledged afterward that he struggled to adjust to Ugás’s rangy, high-guard approach and admitted his legs cramped as the fight wore on — physical realities that come with fighting at 42 against a well-prepared 35-year-old opponent. He stopped short of announcing a retirement, but his comments left the door open to the idea that this loss inside the ring might be the last chapter of his boxing story, even as his other career — as a sitting Philippine senator — continues.

For a fighter whose global celebrity has long outgrown the sport itself, the kind of scrutiny that follows a defeat like this tends to spill well beyond the sports pages and into the wider celebrity conversation, and this result was no exception, quickly becoming one of the week’s most trending stories across sports and entertainment coverage alike.

The Significance of Ugás’s Victory

Beyond the scorecards, the win did something specific for Ugás: it erased any lingering asterisk on his “Super” champion title. He’d held the paperwork since January, but beating the sport’s most recognizable name in a stadium-sized main event on FOX pay-per-view is a different kind of validation than a sanctioning body’s ranking memo. Ugás got both the belt and the signature win in the same night.

Pacquiao, for his part, leaves Las Vegas with a record that now includes a loss to a man who had less than two weeks to prepare — a fact that will follow any conversation about a potential rematch, if his body and his Senate schedule ever allow for one.