On Sunday, June 8, in the tiny upstate New York village of Canastota, as convertibles make their way slowly down Peterboro Street, all eyes will be on Manny Pacquiao, the central attraction among the International Boxing Hall of Fame’s new induction class.

Actually, that’s a lie. 

Pacquiao was going to be the central attraction with all eyes upon him. Then the IBHOF announced that Sydney Sweeney would serve as the annual parade’s grand marshal.

Still, some eyes will be on Manny.

Probably.

Provided Sydney is entirely out of view.

In any case, even if his induction gets somewhat slightly upstaged by the presence of the actress starring in the upcoming Christy Martin biopic, it figures to be a glorious end to a glorious weekend for Pacquiao. The boxing world will come together to celebrate one of the sport’s most remarkable careers, one of its most accomplished people, one of its most beloved heroes – a man who made history too many times to count during his 26-year, 72-bout run.

And 41 days after he delivers his induction speech, Pacquiao may just make boxing history one more time.

He is strongly considering becoming the second boxer ever to engage in a sanctioned fight during the same year in which he is inducted into the IBHOF.

As reported last week, Pacquiao, at age 46, continues to pursue a welterweight alphabet title fight against Mario Barrios, now with a target date of July 19.

If it happens, “Pac-Man” will join an exclusive club. In 1996, Sugar Ray Leonard was voted into the following June’s induction class in Canastota, and on March 1, 1997, three months out from his plaque going up on the wall, he came out of retirement to take on Hector Camacho.

Ignoring those who engaged in exhibitions after becoming Hall of Famers – a somewhat lengthy list – only five boxers have added official bouts to their records after getting voted in.

After his 1992 induction, Alexis Arguello returned for one fight in ’94 and another in ’95 and went 1-1.

2002 inductee Jeff Fenech and 2004 inductee Azumah Nelson both came out of retirement in 2008 to add a third fight to their rivalry, with the younger Fenech capturing a 10-round majority decision in his native Australia.

Last November, 2011 inductee Mike Tyson added an official loss to his record in a deeply depressing money grab against Jake Paul.

But Leonard is the only one thus far to fight in the same year his greatness was celebrated in Canastota.

And, look, Pacquiao is a grown man who can make his own decisions. But it wouldn’t be the worst idea for someone who cares about him to send him the YouTube link to Camacho vs. Leonard.

It’s not a straight apples-to-apples comparison, of course. Leonard was 40 at the time, a young pup compared to Pacquiao now. Camacho was 34. Barrios will be 30 by this July.

For Leonard, the Camacho fight came 20 years after his pro debut. For Pacquiao, it will have been 30 years since he first hit the scene in a four-rounder, weighing 106 pounds.

Leonard hadn’t fought in just over six years, whereas Pacquiao’s layoff will check in at just under four years. (When the IBHOF first opened, a fighter had to be retired at least five years to be eligible for induction, but that was shortened to three years beginning with the 2020 induction class.)

Sugar Ray was coming out of retirement for the fourth time (at least by the broadcasters’ count), whereas Pacquiao has only announced his retirement twice.

The set-up is similar, but not exactly the same.

Also, Leonard was listed as a slight (7-to-5) betting favorite over Camacho. I can’t imagine the 46-year-old Pacquiao, last seen getting smacked around in an exhibition against Rukiya Anpo, will be favored over Barrios, despite his name value and the “public money” presumably impacting the sportsbooks’ lines to some degree.

If you’ve seen the Camacho-Leonard beatdown, you may be inclined to say, “Well, it can’t go any worse for Pac-Man than it did for Leonard.” But that would be an incorrect statement. Yes, it went horribly for Leonard, but he did last beyond four rounds and he probably won one of them. It certainly could go worse.

Camacho-Leonard did reasonably well at the box office. It drew 10,324 to Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, and the fight sold nearly 300,000 pay-per-views (at the now-dated price of $29.95), justifying Leonard’s $4 million payday.

Because Camacho held something called the IBC middleweight title – I believe the A&W title was vacant at the time – Leonard, as challenger, entered the ring first. Blow-by-blow man Al Albert cracked during his ring-walk, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I don’t think they will kick him out of the Hall of Fame.”

No, but Leonard in no way resembled a Hall of Fame fighter at any point during the contest. Facially, he still looked like Sugar Ray Leonard, but otherwise you wouldn’t have guessed this was the same man who’d previously gone 36-2-1 (25 KOs) against the elites of his time.

He was less muscular than in his prime, moving creakily, and even stood ever so slightly hunched over.

He was a 40-year-old man who’d whipped himself into decent shape, but he couldn’t cover up the way his hyper-athleticism was long gone.

The very first clean punch Camacho landed sent Sugar Ray stumbling back, off balance, into the corner. “The Macho Man” – usually a defense-minded southpaw stylist – took an aggressive approach from the outset, a clear sign that he recognized just how depleted the man in front of him was.

Imagine how depressing it would be to watch Mario Barrios fearlessly walking down Manny Pacquiao.

Leonard tripped and fell late in the first round, and it was correctly ruled a slip by referee Joe Cortez, but it was hard to miss how feeble he looked as he went down.

The five-division former titleholder had a decent round in the second, and probably won it. But after that, it got dark.

Camacho – who came in at 63-3-1 (31 KOs) – was never known as a puncher, but a third-round left hand to the temple knocked Leonard back on wobbly legs. A fourth-round head clash left Sugar Ray bleeding from above his left eye.

The end came suddenly in the fifth. Camacho scored with a quick right-left inside, prompting Leonard to hold. The Puerto Rican kept punching while Leonard tried to grab him, and a series of three left uppercuts sent the Hall of Famer down. He flopped awkwardly on his first attempt to stand, rolling over instead, but got to his feet at the count of six. Camacho immediately unloaded along the ropes, and Ray couldn’t defend himself and couldn’t punch back, instead just covering up helplessly until a crunching left uppercut gave Cortez the excuse he needed to stop the fight, at just 1:08 of the fifth round.

“Hector Camacho was supposed to be a safe opponent for Sugar Ray Leonard,” Albert commented, and he and color analyst Sean O’Grady acknowledged that Leonard looked significantly worse than he had six years earlier, in the one-sided loss to Terry Norris that sent him into retirement for a while.

In his post-fight interview with O’Grady, Leonard publicly mentioned for the first time a supposed calf muscle tear suffered during training. (Pacquiao, of course, is no stranger to struggles with calf muscles.) He elaborated at the post-fight press conference – at which he had a helper under each of his arms, assisting him in his walk up the steps to the dais. Leonard had taken a painkiller before the fight to help with the still-healing calf. “Do not write this is the reason I lost,” he insisted. “I lost to a better man.”

Said his longtime friend and camp coordinator, JD Brown, regarding the calf injury: “We started to think about canceling the fight, but Ray thought he could defy the odds.”

In retrospect, it was telling that the Leonard camp wouldn’t let the media see any of his sparring.

Leonard announced his fifth retirement just minutes after the fight ended, telling O’Grady, “For sure, my career is definitely over in the ring. … I’m through.” But six days later, on the ESPN program “Up Close,” he shifted into reverse and said, “Yes, I would fight again,” and spoke of taking some tune-ups and working his way back. Thankfully, none of that happened.

The next issue of The Ring magazine had on its cover a picture of Leonard in his corner, eye closed, blood from that small cut trickling down his face, with the headline, “Blinded By Ego.”

Writer John Scheinman concluded his story: “It’s too bad a smart man like Leonard refuses to read the writing when it’s so perfectly legible. Everybody gets old. The trick is to learn to live with it. Why do boxers have so much trouble with that?

“Ray, it’s over.”

The next year, Leonard spoke more openly about the challenges of training for a fight at age 40. In a feature for the September 1998 issue of KO magazine about the difficulties Tyson could theoretically encounter when he would soon begin preparing to return from his “Bite Fight” suspension, Leonard talked about how much more slowly an old, inactive fighter’s body recuperates from injury and even simple soreness.

“The first day or so [of training], it’s funny. It’s no big deal,” Leonard said. “Then all of a sudden, the body starts to communicate with the brain, and the brain says, ‘You know what, we haven’t done this in a while.’”

Mario Barrios can take a very different lesson from Camacho-Leonard than most people will. He may see that Camacho used the Leonard win as a springboard to a handsome payday against a prime Oscar De La Hoya, and he may envision how disposing of Pacquiao could make someone like, say, Ryan Garcia, interested in sharing the ring with him.

But the lesson for most of us should come from the Leonard side of the equation, that reminder of how many of the all-time greats had to be beaten into retirement in a way that was emotionally devastating to watch.

It happened to Leonard. It famously happened to Muhammad Ali. It, perhaps most famously, happened to Joe Louis. 

It happened to De La Hoya, at the hands of a prime Pacquiao.

So far, it hasn’t really happened to Pacquiao. As of the moment he was voted into the Hall of Fame, his farewell fight had been a somewhat competitive decision loss to Yordenis Ugas. It was about as dignified a defeat on which to exit as you could ask for.

Manny Pacquiao is a Hall of Famer. In June, he will dip his fist in plaster as the throngs descending upon Canastota fete him. 

The Camacho fight offered Ray Leonard a painful lesson. Pacquiao still has time to absorb that lesson without the pain, and to make that bucket of plaster the last thing he tries to sink his once-lethal southpaw left hand into.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on , , or , or via email at [email protected].