Champion boxer Pacquiao denies links to PyeongChang Olympics promotion

By Ko Dong-hwan

Manny Pacquiao at a work out at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California, Apr. 15, 2015, before the fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Las Vegas. / Korea Times file

Former world boxing title holder Manny Pacquiao has denied he is in South Korea to promote the PyeongChang Olympics.

The Filipino, who said he was in Seoul for a family vacation, denied he was going to the National Assembly on Friday morning to join a promotional event for the PyeongChang Paralympics. He said Korean news reports of this were false and his official schedule on the day begins at 1 p.m.

Korean reporters had asked him whether his second visit to South Korea following a visit last December is about promoting the Winter Games. But he said it is a “family vacation, the same as last year.”

Pacquiao has been a Philippines senator since June 2016. He denied Korean news media suggestions he leaned toward South Korean political parties and think-tanks like Liberty Korea Party, the People’s Party and the Korea Institute for Shared Growth.

During his seven-night stay, the boxer, 39, will join filming of Korean TV variety show “Infinite Challenge” on MBC. He will feature in a bout with three of the show’s seven regular comedians. On Dec. 26, he will accompany the governor and tourism chief of the Filipino province of Sarangani to a meeting with Seoul Mayor Park Won-sun.

Pacquiao, the only eight-division world champion, was ranked second on ESPN’s list of top pound-for-pound boxers of the past 25 years in 2016. He has won 11 major world titles. His match against America’s Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in 2015 was billed “the fight of the century.”