De La Hoya: It’s not going to be easy for Pacquiao to come back from his KO loss

By Chris Williams: Oscar De La Hoya has serious doubts about whether Manny Pacquiao will ever be the same fighter after his KO loss to Juan Manuel Marquez on December 8th of this month. De La Hoya joins Bernard Hopkins and many others who question whether Pacquiao will be able to recover from the crushing knockout he suffered in the 6th round in his fight with Marquez because of how devastating the knockout was.

De La Hoya said to Power 106 FM “It’s not going to be easy to come back. That’s going to be the million dollar question. It’s always going to be there psychologically, ‘can I take that shot.’ History shows it’s impossible to come back.”

There it is. De La Hoya thinks it’s going to be next to impossible for Pacquiao to ever fully recover from the effects of his knockout to come back and resume fighting the way he was before. It’s going to be tough and the only way we’re going to find out is when Pacquiao gets back in the ring with Marquez or whoever his promoter Bob Arum matches him up with in his Top Rank stable.

I think Arum will put Pacquiao back in with Marquez next because the risk will be too high if Arum puts him in with someone else in a kind of tune-up fight. Arum won’t want to lose the Pacquiao-Marquez 5 fight because the fight will make so much money and a loss for Pacquiao will decrease a lot of the interest in that fight.

I think Arum would still make a Pacquiao-Marquez 5th fight even if Pacquiao loses in a tune-up, but the fight wouldn’t make as much as it would if he puts them back in the ring immediately. Obviously, Arum’s not going to take any chances of messing up the rematch by putting Pacquiao in with anyone else.

We could see Pacquiao get poleaxed again, because De La Hoya is right about history showing that it’s tough for fighters to come back after a KO loss. De La Hoya mentioned Paul Williams in how he fought after he was knocked unconscious by Sergio Martinez. Williams looked terrible in taking a beating by Erislandy Lara. He looked shot in that fight, but Williams did come back and win his last fight before his motorcycle injury.