I know I wasn’t the only one who let out a big “Who?” when it was announced on Thursday that Manny Pacquiao, returning to the ring for the first time since losing a decision to Yordenis Ugas last August, would be fighting an exhibition against South Korean YouTuber and apparent martial artist DK Yoo.
Yoo? Who?
Admittedly, the YouTube martial arts world is not exactly my thing, so I’m not exactly beating myself up over the fact that I had never heard of Yoo before Thursday.
So, to educate myself and get myself up to speed on who Pacquiao will apparently be fighting, I did some research on the man and what’s what with him.
If you only go to Yoo’s YouTube channel (with 654K followers as of this writing), you get a lot of well-crafted videos and martial arts exhibitions that give you the idea that the man just may be a modern master. Billing himself as the master and creator of “Warfare Combat System,” there’s little reason for the novice observer to doubt that he’s anything but a master. Getting a huge exhibition fight with a star of Pacquiao’s level only supports the idea that Yoo is a big deal in the world of fighting.
The 42-year-old Yoo even had a 6-round pay-per-view boxing match with former UFC fighter Bradley Scott last year– and if you viewed the heavily-edited highlight video of that fight on his channel, he handled things well and fought to a stalemate with the mixed-martial artist. He must be a big SOMEBODY, right?
But, then, look for the FULL, unedited video of the fight. It won’t be easy to find since, apparently, Yoo aggressively attacked anyone posting the unedited fight video with copyright violation claims. But the internet, being the internet, has dark pockets where one CAN access such prohibited material and you WILL be able to find Yoo-Scott in its entirety if you try hard enough.
And, man, what REALLY took place looked nothing like the fight Yoo posted on his YouTube channel.
In the 6-round bout, the South Korean was absolutely dominated from opening bell to closing bell, landed no significant punches, and was, overall, struggling with very basic boxing fundamentals. After a bunch of flopping and holding on Yoo’s part (and some mercy from Scott), the former UFC fighter had his hand raised as the very clear winner.
Look for post-fight reaction videos and you’ll find volumes upon volumes of “DK Yoo is a pretender and a fraud” material.
Martial artist and MMA fighter Ramsey Dewey, who also has a YouTube channel, made a recent video about the proposed Yoo-Pacquiao exhibition bout and went so far as call Yoo a clown and wonder aloud about the very legitimacy of this Pacquiao fight.
“What is going to happen, Man?” Dewey wondered aloud on his video. “A bunch of shenanigans. A bunch of shenanigans!”
Dewey would more than suggest that this fight might even taint the legacy of the Filipino icon and future first-ballot Hall of Famer.
“How is this going to reflect on the legacy of Manny Pacquiao? That he comes out of retirement for an exhibition with a glorified clown? The only way I can see this makes sense is if Pacquiao just thoroughly embarrasses him or knocks him out cold and clean in the first round, showing the world that this guy has no business in the ring.”
Again, the martial arts world is not my thing, so I’m not qualified to say whether DK Yoo is a legit master or a pure charlatan. What I do feel qualified in saying, however, is that he’s no world class boxer.
Pacquiao’s domination should be total and as brutal as he chooses it to be.
