INQUIRER Sports

LAS VEGAS, Nevada—Nacho Beristain watched as boxing’s most famous fighter took a beating from an unrelenting pound-for-pound champion who seemed intent at squeezing every drop of greatness out of the 35-year-old legend’s body.

Before the ninth round could begin, the venerable trainer had seen enough.

He told referee Tony Weeks to end the fight and in that instant, amid an explosion of cheers and flashbulbs, Manny Pacquiao accomplished what seemed impossible just eight rounds before.

A decided underdog, the Filipino champion finished off the legendary Oscar De La Hoya with an eight-round TKO victory Saturday (Sunday in Manila) in their welterweight “Dream Match” that turned out to be a mismatch at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Pacquiao started and ended the eighth round with a barrage of power punches. And all it took for Berestain to decide that it was time to wave the white flag was a look at the puffed-up face of boxing’s long-time poster boy.

“I did not want to leave his greatness in the ring,” Beristain— who had hoped to turn De La Hoya into an effective counter-puncher in an effort to negate Pacquiao’s speed and power— told journalists through an interpreter after the fight.

So complete and dominating was Pacquiao that De La Hoya, the man who had single-handedly helped boxing survive the dearth of talent at the centerpiece heavyweight division, needed to be rushed to the hospital as a safety precaution after the fight.

And the Gen. Santos City native admitted to being one of those who couldn’t stand the sight of the former Olympic champion getting beaten up so badly.

“I also felt pity for him in a way,” Pacquiao said. “But I had a job to do and that’s what I did.”

“He fought the fight we were supposed to fight,” said trainer Freddie Roach, who said he would have pulled the plug earlier if he were in Oscar’s corner.

“I think it should have ended a round or two before,” Pacquiao’s crafty trainer added. “Oscar was taking a lot of shots and his face was busting out.”

“He was connecting with nothing,” Pacquiao said after the bout.

The 29-year-old Pacquiao improved his record to 48-3-2 and his knockout count to 36. De La Hoya slipped to 39-6 with 30 KOs.

More notable is the fact that in his six losses, the Golden Boy had been stopped only once before, by Bernard Hopkins. And while he was counted out after a shot to the body there, he didn’t receive the kind of sustained beating he took Saturday night.

Pacquiao took complete control as early as the second round by unloading several combinations, including one that was capped by an uppercut that clearly rocked De La Hoya and roused large segments of the crowd that rooted for the underdog.

But Roach said De La Hoya had little to offer even before that round.

“I knew it was over after the first round,” Roach said. “He had been taking punches as early as that round.”

For some strange reasons, De La Hoya wasn’t launching anything outside of occasional barrages that were off target. Not that the target was easy to find.

“Oscar really couldn’t pull the trigger but a lot of that was Manny’s doing,” Roach said. “He was moving so well, getting in, unloading punches and then getting out that Oscar really didn’t know where he was at times.”

De La Hoya had his moments, though. He managed to connect with combinations and made it seem like he was merely saving gas for the later rounds, where he is known to lose steam.

In an entertaining fifth round, De La Hoya jumped the gun with a jab. And, although he absorbed several combinations by Pacquiao, he engaged the reigning WBC lightweight champion—who leapfrogged past two divisions to face the Golden Boy—in a fierce exchange, backing Pacquiao up at one point.

In the decisive eighth round, after finding himself caught in a whirlwind of combinations, De La Hoya sucked it in and went left-right to the body. With Pacquiao forced to cover up, he went for the head with another crisp combination.

It looked like Oscar was on his way to winning a round until Pacquiao danced his way inside the jab designed to hold him off. The jab was starting to get ineffective, too, as it looked more like De La Hoya was pushing it instead of snapping it.

Then Pacquiao countered with a four-punch combination that clearly hurt De La Hoya and made Beristain decide to end it after the bell.

Actually, Beristain had checked with his ward at the end of the eighth, asking De La Hoya: “Are you dizzy? Do you have a headache?”

De La Hoya shook his head and at one point of their conversation, said vamos! (let’s go!). But it wasn’t enough to convince Beristain.

“I had to stop the fight; there was nothing else to do this night, so I had to do this,” said Beristain.

An elated Pacquiao later dropped to his knees in a neutral corner in a celebratory prayer before the announcement by Michael Buffer made it official.

The once one-dimensional southpaw fighter, the first Asian to win world titles in four division, had conquered what he deemed was his biggest challenge.

“I’m just happy that I made a lot of people happy,” said Pacquiao.