Last Saturday night’s loss may have signaled the conclusion of Manny Pacquiao’s time in the ring and hampered his run for the Philippine Presidency.

They came to T-Mobile Arena on Saturday, the friends and family and associates of Manny Pacquiao. His fans: The boxing aficionados, the celebrities. A full 2,000 people received tickets from the boxer. A few hundred managed to meet with him this week inside his suite at the MGM Grand. A couple dozen found their way to a maze of hallways beneath the stands, navigated to the dressing rooms, pushed past one unmarked door and ran into another.

Below a red sign that announced RESTROOMS, a single sheet of white paper was taped to the brown wood. In all caps and blue type, it marked the inner sanctuary, with two words—MANNY PACQUIAO—that were laden with significance, like a portal to The End. Everyone who advanced inside understood the landscape and the stakes. Not for this particular bout, against welterweight champion Yordenis Ugás, but for this particular boxer, at this particular moment in time.

The assembled knew that an eight-division world champion hoped to summon more age-defying magic in order to launch a presidential campaign in the Philippines. But they also wondered, because of things like physics and birthday candles, whether they were gathering as they had for decades—only, now, for the last time.

More than three hours before the opening bell sounded, the line at the box office snaked halfway down the street. One person even dressed like Pacquiao, right down to the boxing trunks. As he shadowboxed, the dominant chant that echoed all Saturday began. Man-ny! Man-ny! Man-ny!

And yet, this was not any other Saturday. This was, potentially, The End.

Longtime team members like Buboy Fernandez wait for Pacquiao’s arrival. They hang up the bright red robe he will wear into the ring. They fiddle with the water bottles stacked on a folding table, arranging and rearranging. They even stretch out, hours before they will shout instructions while sitting down.

The welterweight champion, Ugás, who had been scheduled for the same card, only for his opponent to suffer an injury; then, the perfect, last-second pairing. Ugás, after all, held the WBA belt that had been taken from Pacquiao due to inactivity. Ugás took the fight on 11 days’ notice, calling it the “most important” bout of his life. In that fearlessness, Pacquiao looked at Ugás—an Olympic bronze medalist and Cuban defector who never shied away from top competition—and saw a younger version of … himself.

At 7:58: The room fills again. Pacquiao ties and unties his shoes. He puts on his shorts, changes shirts—the new one says “God’s Champion”—and has gloves shoved onto his fists. Finally, it’s time; if not, The End, then more steps in that direction.

Roach is back in the dressing room, after working two other corners for two other fights on the card. By this point, only a handful of Pacquiao’s closest confidants remain. Roach gives Pacquiao one final instruction—to wait for Ugás to throw a straight right and come over the top of it with his left. “Catch him when he lunges,” Roach says. But there’s something else about that moment that stands out. It’s the fighter and the trainer, after two decades now something closer to father and son. At this moment, about to walk to the ring to face an opponent with superb technical proficiency, having been given less than two weeks to prepare for his tricky style, they’re both … smiling.

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And everyone is chanting: Man-ny! Man-ny! It feels like … the perfect end?

The bell rang. Ugás stalks toward Pacquiao his frame noticeably larger. Pacquiao briefly pins him in the corner. The crowd leaps to its collective feet and roars.

By the end of the second round, though, the theme of the fight becomes clearer. Ugás, in style and in age, presents a problem for Pacquiao. His double jab is effective and opens up a bruise that swells under Pacquiao’s right eye. The crowd continues trying, cheering, chanting, as if willing Pacquiao forward. But he looks like a 42-year-old champion facing a game opponent. He’s not as fast as the Pacquiao that will live forever in the minds of boxing fans across the world. His punches aren’t as precise.

A boxer who once delivered spectacular knockouts entered this bout with only one stoppage victory in his last 16 bouts. That’s a factor against Ugás, too, and one that Ugás exacerbates with excellent defensive maneuvering. Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns watches all this unfold from ringside. He knows that power doesn’t last forever. Nor do Hall of Fame careers.

Pacquiao and Ugás go back and forth, both men trading blows but neither doing extensive damage to the other. By the time the final bell rings, the fight is close. Most boxing experts posting on social media believe that Ugás won, by a close margin, and the judges agree, scoring the bout unanimously for the Cuban champion (115-113, 116-112, 116-112).

The crowd boos but their reaction seems halfhearted, because they now must face the cold and inevitable truth: if this isn’t Manny Pacquiao’s last fight, maybe it should be.

Pacquiao retreats to both the dressing room and an uncertain future. He finds Roach and wraps his trainer in a bear hug. His people shower him with a standing ovation.

He’s gracious in defeat. He says that his legs were cramping, which limited his movement, giving additional context to that pre-fight massage. There’s that mouse under his right eye. Bruises cover his left cheek and the forehead space above his left eyebrow. His lip is fattened. His right eye is turned bright red. He’s now 18—5—2 in world title fights, has done everything a boxer can do. And while the defeat likely hurts his chances to become president of the Philippines next May, he has a lot of life ahead of him.

Consider all of that and there’s only one logical conclusion: there doesn’t seem to be any reason for him to continue fighting. Except the most important one: he wants to. Pacquiao admits as much at the post-fight news conference. He tells the writers there to cover him that “we’re not young anymore.”

“In my heart, I want to continue to fight,” he says. “But I also have to consider my body.”

For now, his boxing future remains in doubt. But he should listen to himself. If this is indeed The End, Pacquiao finished a career unlike any other with a night like many others. What made it special, what the assembled will remember, are those hours in the dressing room, when the ecosystem that is Manny Pacquiao continued onward, and it wasn’t about Ugás or legacy or pound-for-pound rankings. It was about Fortune and Gibbons and Buboy and Roach. And, of course, the champion who tethered all of them together, for as long as he possibly could.

Culled from goalmirror.com