UNITED STATES: Yordenis Ugas defeats Manny Pacquiao via unanimous decision (115-113, 116-112, 116-112) to retain his WBA super-middleweight title. Manny Pacquiao was a heavy favorite going into this fight against Yordenis Ugas. Earlier Manny Pacquiao was scheduled to fight current unified welterweight world champion Errol Spence Jr. but the fight got canceled because Errol Spence Jr. suffered a retina injury weeks before his scheduled fight against Pacquiao.
Yordenis Ugas was a +280 underdog while Manny Pacquiao was a -360 favorite. Manny Pacquiao started round 1 with some jabs followed by a flurry of punches. Ugas tried to push Pacquiao in the ropes but instead got hit by a shot from Pacquiao and according to the judges Pacquiao won the 1st round 10-9.
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At the start of the 2nd round, Ugas started landing some good shots on Pacquiao while also ducking Pacquiao’s jabs. Ugas took the 2nd round. Manny Pacquiao was hitting him with combinations but he was also missing some shots while Ugas was not scared to counter Pacquiao’s shots.
During the first half of the fight, the battle between Ugas and Pacquiao was looking competitive but over the second half of the fight, Ugas was causing a lot of trouble for Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao had trouble picking Ugas’ body shots and hard right hands. Ugas also left a cut above the right eye of Pacquiao’s face.
Ugas won the fight by unanimous decision and it was also the first title defense of his WBA title. After the fight, Pacquiao said that “I’m sorry that we lost tonight, but I did my best”. He further added that “Let me rest first and relax before deciding whether I will fight or not”.
After the fight Ugas said that, “I want to thank Manny Pacquiao for giving me this moment in the ring today, I would now like to unify the title at welterweight”. He also added that “Everybody said he’s (Manny Pacquiao) is the champion but now they know who the real champion is”. Yordenis Ugas wants to unify the belts at welterweight that means he wants to fight Errol Spence Jr. next.
