Learning from Bruce Lee, Pacquiao became a world boxing legend

Manny Pacquiao learned from Bruce Lee to become one of the greatest boxers of all time.

Manny Pacquiao (born 1978) is a boxing icon in the Philippines. At the end of 2024, the news that Manny Pacquiao will be officially inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in June 2025 made many fans happy.

This is a prestigious award for those who have made special contributions to the sport.

Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to win championships in 8 different weight classes, from flyweight to super welterweight. Pacquiao started his career in 1995 and competed until 2021, with 72 fights. He won 62 fights, including 39 knockouts.

Pacquiao’s notable victories are against world-class boxers such as Juan Manuel Marquez, Miguel Cotto and Oscar De La Hoya. Few people know that to become an excellent boxer, Pacquiao learned from Bruce Lee.

The New York Times of the United States once revealed that Manny Pacquiao learned Bruce Lee’s style to apply to boxing.

How did Manny Pacquiao learn from Bruce Lee?

“Manny Pacquiao’s boxing talent is associated with his graceful legs like in the dance “Riverdance”, his calves are as big as grapefruits plus impressive strength from his torso.

Manny Pacquiao’s movements are irregular, seemingly designed by a jazz musician, always surprising and relentless.

He creates unique angles, appears and disappears, moves, attacks; sometimes balanced, sometimes not, even with only one leg he can still strike. This is the style—part performance art, part technical brilliance—that characterizes Pacquiao, considered the greatest boxer of his generation. And it all started with a videotape of his idol, Bruce Lee,” wrote the New York Times.

Manny Pacquiao himself admits that his style is: “Like Bruce Lee.” As a child in the Philippines, Pacquiao would watch Lee movies over and over again. His favorite Lee movie was “Enter the Dragon” (1973).

Fitness coach Alex Ariza, who has worked with Pacquiao, believes that the Filipino’s basic movements were inspired by Lee’s relentless style of striking: his feet moving back and forth in time to the music.

“Bruce Lee would jump, kick, shake his head and shoulders,” Ariza said. “His feet were in sync with his hands. It may look disjointed, but it has a rhythm. Manny does the same. His movements come from that,” Ariza asserted.

By learning from Bruce Lee, Pacquiao has created a “powerful weapon” in boxing matches. Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s coach, once commented on the Filipino boxer: “When Pacquiao moves, his movement technique is so precise that it creates angles and wins all his fights.”

The constant movement makes Pacquiao an unpredictable fighter in the ring. This disrupts the rhythm of his opponents, forcing them to take risks.

Meanwhile, coach Joe Goossen has a completely different view but has to admit that Pacquiao’s movements are very effective: “It’s an unpolished athletic style, but it’s very attractive and unique. It’s not a continuous flow of beauty. It can be awkward, it can be rough, it can be purposeful, it can be unorthodox. But it works.”

Pacquiao’s fearsome power

As Pacquiao continued to move up the weight classes, coach Roach worried about how quickly Pacquiao might lose speed, but he was amazed. In all his years, Roach had never seen a fighter gain weight and still maintain the speed and power like Pacquiao.

Meanwhile, fitness coach Ariza points to other factors that help Pacquiao maintain his formidable speed and power, including diet, isometric exercises for balance, plyometric exercises for explosive power.

“Pacquiao is like a freak,” Ariza says. “His resting heart rate in the morning is 42 beats per minute. “If Pacquiao had done half the work he’s doing, he would still be where he is,” Ariza continued.

In their 2010 fight, Pacquiao faced Antonio Margarito at light middleweight. When Margarito’s trainer, Robert Garcia, reviewed videos of Pacquiao, he saw a fighter who was too forward and exposed his weaknesses. Garcia directed Margarito to attack Pacquiao’s body, but the fighter couldn’t keep up and lost vision in one eye from Pacquiao’s punches.

“Whatever plan we had for Pacquiao, he just destroyed it,” said Robert Garcia, helplessly. “What looks possible on video is not. Nobody beats him.”