Manny Pacquiao Retirement: Examining Pac-Man's Legacy After Vargas Win

Manny Pacquiao retired from boxing in April following a decisive victory over Timothy Bradley, but he returned to the ring Saturday night for a showdown with Jessie Vargas. 

With the WBO welterweight title on the line, Pacquiao (59-6-2) dispatched Vargas (27-2) via unanimous decision at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas to claim the belt, as ESPN.com's Arash Markazi documented on Twitter: 

According to ESPN.com's Dan Rafael, the fight was scored 118-109, 118-109, 114-113 in favor of Pacquiao. 

A win over Vargas won't bolster Pacquiao's legacy in a particularly meaningful way since he's past his prime, but it also won't hurt it. 

The southpaw has long been revered as one of the elite fighters of his generation, and his rise to superstardom following a 2008 defeat of Oscar De La Hoya thrust him into the spotlight as a premier competitor. 

After his signature win, Pacquiao rattled off six straight victories over opponents ranging from Ricky Hatton to Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley thanks to stellar quickness that enabled him to daze fighters with flurries of ferocious blows. 

And as Bloody Elbow's Fraser Coffeen noted, "People didn't watch Pacquiao because of his hype interviews or his posturing, they watched him because he entertained. Because he stepped into the ring with great fighters, and when he did, he showed off incredible technique that simply befuddled them."

However, Pacquiao's reign as one of the sport's most dominant forces came to a halt when he suffered a split-decision loss to Bradley and was knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez in December 2012. 

Pacquiao also failed to hold up his end of the bargain in the supposed fight of the century with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May 2015. Although it was hyped as one of boxing's greatest showdowns, the unspectacular showcase yielded a unanimous-decision victory for Money due, in part, to Pacquiao's injured right rotator cuff. 

In addition to some notable failures in the ring, the Filipino senator made controversial comments outside of it when he declared people in same-sex relationships "are worse than animals," according to the Guardian. 

All of those factors create for a complicated legacy—one that was marked by tremendous triumphs, a few glaring slip-ups and questionable statements that angered segments of the sporting universe. 

And while Saturday's win represented a successful return to the ring for Pacquiao following a brief hiatus—especially since it came against a 27-year-old challenger—it will merely serve as a footnote when his career is evaluated once and for all. 

Stats courtesy of BoxRec.com.