By Chris Williams: Former two division world champion Bernard Hopkins doesn’t think Manny Pacquiao will be able to come back and be the same fighter he once was after he was knocked out cold by a right hand from Juan Manuel Marquez last weekend.
Pacquiao was knocked unconscious and left on his face on the canvas for a long period of time before he woke up and walked to his corner. Hopkins thinks that Pacquiao should take a year off from boxing so that he can recover from the shot.
Hopkins said on the Jim Rome Show on Showtime “That’s the type of punch that takes more than one fight out of you. It takes a couple of fights out of you. It’s one of those types of knockouts that you can recover from in life, but I don’t think you can recover fully in the sport. That was a devastating knockout that has a long-term effect…. I know when you see a guy get knocked out and hit in that way, they are considered damaged goods.”
Pacquiao is going to try and prove a lot of boxing fans wrong by coming back and facing Marquez again, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to succeed. It also doesn’t mean it’s the smart thing for him to do. I personally think Pacquiao should stay as far away from Marquez as possible for the remainder of his career, because Marquez has owned him in their four fights and probably will change in that regard in a rematch next year.
Marquez will be just as strong as he was last Saturday night, if not stronger, and we saw how he was able to hurt Pacquiao each time he connected cleanly with a hard shot. Pacquiao was hit really hard twice in the fight and both times he went down hard on the canvas. Those weren’t easy knockdowns. Those were brutal poleaxe knockdowns with Marquez connecting with big right hands and Pacquiao falling over like he was hit with a bowling ball.
Pacquiao doesn’t realize that he could be getting knocked out cold when he steps inside the ring again with Marquez. I guess he’s going to have to find out the hard way by going out and tasting the canvas again if Marquez is able to land his big rights, and I don’t see what will stop him from doing that.
Comments are closed.