Whether this is any less ugly you'll have to make your own mind up about.

use constant FRED=>'fred';

my @s = qw[
    the=the 
    quick=quick 
    brown=brown 
    fred=fred1 
    jumped=jumped 
    over=over 
    the=the 
    lazy=lazy 
    fred=fred2 
];

$_ =~ ( FRED . '=(.*)$' ) and print "Found $1" for @s;

Found fred1
Found fred2
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