MANNY PACQUIAO has insisted he wants another shot at Floyd Mayweather after revealing that a tear in his shoulder almost forced him to pull out of Saturday night's Fight of the Century.
The Filipino had a late request for a pain-killing injection on fight night turned down by Nevada authorities and proceeded to be comprehensively defeated by Mayweather's defensive exhibition at the MGM Grand as the richest fight in history failed to truly spark under the watching eyes of the world.
"Three weeks before the fight I got a tear in my right shoulder. It got better but it wasn't 100%," said Pacquiao, whose request for an anti-inflammatory injection came too late in the day for authortites' approval. "In the third round, I felt pain in the shoulder. We didn't throw a lot of combinations because it hurt. The thing is, what we wanted to do we could not do because of my (right) shoulder."
Pacquiao said he'd like the chance to do it all over again but the nature of the Saturday's fight didn't leave a whole lot of hunger to see the pound-for-pound kings of this generation reconvene in the ring. Apart from a superb salvo in the fourth round and another flurry of combinations in the sixth, Pacquiao struggled in much the same way Mayweather's opponents have for years - laying a glove on the defensive master whose countering rights swayed the judges in the key rounds.
Mayweather avoided talk of a rematch, asking to have time to enjoy his victory, while England's Amir Khan gave ringside reporters the reasons why he feel he should be what is due to be the final opponent of Mayweather's career in September.
The unified welterweight champion of the world revealed that he will relinquish all five of his world titles as early as today, insisting that "it's time for someone else to have a chance". "I'm not greedy," Mayweather added before unfolding and display a Bank of America cheque for $100million, his purse for the super fight.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article