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On Saturday night, 37-year-old Manny Pacquiao will walk into the ring for the 66th time when he faces Timothy Bradley. It's the rubber match of the least compelling trilogy in modern boxing history and, quite possibly, the last time we'll ever see the future Hall of Famer in a professional boxing match.

I couldn't be happier about that.

Together with Floyd Mayweather Jr., the man with whom Pacquiao will walk hand-in-hand through athletic eternity, Manny has been one of the top two boxers of his era. Since beating Oscar De La Hoya in a 2008 bout that made him an international star, Pacquiao has main-evented six different fights that sold more than a million pay-per-views.

As an athlete, Pacquiao has nothing to be ashamed of. Mayweather, too, could likely reassert himself as the top dog in a sport still desperately seeking his replacement.

No, my Mayweather and Pacquiao fatigue stems from a different source. As athletes, they have nothing to be ashamed of. As celebrities, however, I'd love to see both men walk away and never come back.

At the box office and in the ring, Pacquiao is one of the most successful stars boxing has ever seen. His darting, reckless style was the antithesis of Mayweather's composed technical mastery. The two presented an interesting dichotomy. In a better world, they would have had multiple battles while occupying the same division at the same time.

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Manny Pacquiao's Championship Legacy Weight Class Opponent Date Flyweight Chatchai Sasakul 12/4/98 Super Bantamweight Lehlo Ledwaba 6/23/01 Featherweight Marco Antonio Barrera 11/15/03 Super Featherweight Juan Manuel Marquez 3/15/08 Lightweight David Diaz 6/28/08 Light Welterweight Ricky Hatton 5/2/09 Welterweight Miguel Cotto 11/14/09 Light Middleweight Antonio Margarito 11/13/2010 boxrec.com

Instead, boxing fans were forced to wait while a behind-the-scenes clash of egos stopped the only bout anyone cared about in its tracks. We waited for six years—until the two had aged out of their primes, with Pacquiao especially seeming to have lost a step in his late 30s.

When it finally came a year ago, the fight of the century fizzled. Almost 5 million people purchased it on pay-per-view. Many of them will never return to the sport. It may very well be the night boxing died as a mainstream sport in America.

All of that, to boxing's hardcore fanbase, is forgivable. We are used to disappointment, shenanigans and complete chaos. Some might argue those were the sport's defining characteristics.

I can forgive Pacquiao and Mayweather for their years-long stranglehold on the sport, refusal to meet in the ring and disastrous performance once they finally decided to walk that aisle. I can even forgive them for aging, though it's hard to watch the decline of master sportsmen in any sport, legends becoming mortal right before your eyes. None of us are as young as we once were.

It's away from the ring, when bright lights shined on the way they lived their lives, that both fighters fell short.

Mayweather's cretinous behavior is well-known and scrupulously documented. He created a villainous, showboating monster named "Money" to help promote his fights. As this fictional character, Mayweather was vile, greedy and awful to almost everyone around him. He sold tickets like no one since Mike Tyson.

And, as Deadspin's Daniel Roberts explained, he was actually a better person in this persona than in his real life:

Floyd Mayweather's history of misogyny, expressed—as he is wont to do—through violence, is well-documented and reprehensible. It extends over a dozen years and includes at least seven separate physical assaults on five different women that resulted in arrest or citation, as well as several other instances where the police had to be summoned in response to an actual or perceived threat from Mayweather.

Because of this history, Pacquiao was positioned as the white knight when the two were finally paired. But that was a miscast morality tale. Behind his childlike smile and laudable philanthropy, Pacquiao was far from a storybook hero.

According to a biography written by Gary Andrew Poole, Pacquiao has associated with a notorious crime lord and raised a thousand birds for cockfighting competition. Pacquiao has also violated his marital vows again and again. Because Mayweather is such a cad, however, Pacquiao managed to play the hero role he didn't deserve.

But, with Floyd departed from the scene and enjoying the good life, Pacquiao had no buffer between him and public scrutiny. So, when he voiced a reprehensible opinion in the gay marriage debate, not even his status as a pugilistic god could save him from the scourge of social justice warriors.

"It's common sense," Pacquiao told a Filipino television station. "Will you see any animals where male is to male and female is to female? The animals are better. They know how to distinguish, male or female. If we approve male on male and female on female, then man is worse than animal."

Response was immediate and appropriately harsh. Wrestler Dave Bautista, son of a lesbian mother, called the boxer "a f--king idiot." In a series of tweets, basketball legend Magic Johnson vowed never to watch Pacquiao fight again. Nike, too, cut ties with the iconic boxer.

Even his promoter, the venerable huckster Bob Arum, couldn't keep silent, speaking out against his own fighter to Dan Rafael of ESPN:

If he had just said he was against same-sex marriage I wouldn't have been happy but he has his religious beliefs. I do not believe he had any malicious intent. People know Manny is not that kind of person. But he did make this stupid argument. When he says that animals know male and female and they mate male and female, he overlooked scientific fact that there is a lot of homosexuality among animals. ...



I disliked his analogy. I agreed with Nike. Nike is in the f---ing business of selling merchandise to the public. Gays and lesbians are a significant demographic, and why would you have somebody endorse your product if they offended a portion of your market? If I was running Nike, I would have done the same thing.



Pacquiao's response to all this was a classic non-apology and then a doubling down of his stance on social media by posting, and later deleting, a Bible verse that advocated gays be stoned to death. It was a misstep that the Guardian's Bryan Graham believes could haunt the fighter throughout his history, his exploits in the ring unable to overpower his poisonous public persona:

The stain of Pacquiao's remarks now threatens to color a hard-won boxing legacy. He apologized within hours—although comments on Thursday that people "are alarmed by the truth" may well have made matters worse—but it will take more than words to atone for the wounds these comments have caused. Only a demonstrated move towards understanding will begin to suffice. Given his beliefs it is highly unlikely he will decamp from the wrong side of history.



These are the statements of a man so ignorant he doesn't understand the impact of his own rhetoric. And that can be even more insidious than bigotry with explicit intent. Words carry a lasting power greater than even Pacquiao's most devastating left hand. While these remarks will never undo his many good deeds, redemption in the public eye could remain forever out of reach.

As a writer on the combat sports beat, the Mayweather and Pacquiao era has been exhausting. I don't want to be on the crime beat or a player in the social justice wars.

If I want retrograde positions on the political and social issues of the day, I can peruse Facebook memes. Tales of domestic violence's haunting effects on children, unfortunately, are also all too common. Sports are supposed to be an escape from all of that, a chance to watch people challenge both themselves and what the human body is capable of at its peak.

Maybe when Pacquiao joins Mayweather in retirement, boxing can go back to being boxing—a sport with unparalleled heroism and courage, featuring men and women willing to sacrifice everything for a moment of glory. Pacquiao, at this point, makes it impossible to simply sit back and enjoy the show. I won't miss him.

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.