Pacquiao the favorite to beat Rios

By Boxing News - 06/06/2013 - Comments

pac653By Chris Williams: It seems that Manny Pacquiao’s knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last December hasn’t scared away the oddsmakers for Pacquiao’s next fight against Brandon Rios on November 23rd in Macao, China. They see Paquiao beating Rios for some reason.

I hope for Pacquiao’s sake they’re right because he didn’t just lose his last fight. He lost his fight before that against Tim Bradley, and looked like an old man in running out of gas in the second half of the fight.

People see Pacquiao winning because Rios is so wide open on defense and he was just out-boxed and beaten in his last fight against Mike Alvarado last March. Fans believe that because Alvarado was able to beat Rios then Pacquiao naturally would as well.

I might agree with that except that Alvarado wasn’t viciously knocked out in the 6th round like Pacquiao was by Marquez. That kind of knockout oftentimes leaves the fighter vulnerable to suffering additional knockouts in the future. Pacquiao might get knocked cold by the first shot that Rios hits him with in this fight.

Rios has better power than Marquez and he’s capable of hitting Pacquiao with huge shots that are even harder than the one that Marquez knocked him out with. It’s scary to think of what Rios might do to the Filipino with one of his shots to the head. Rios throws a lot of shots.

He’s not going to just look to counter Pacquiao like Marquez did. He’s going to be looking to tag Pacquiao constantly and beat him in the trenches. Pacquiao, 34, will be forced to trade with Rios and that could be a bad thing for him.

Pacquiao’s fans believe that he can’t lose to Rios because they see Rios as a limited fighter with slower hand speed and a pretty simple fighting style. That may be but Pacquiao has suddenly become an old lion and on November 23rd, he’s going to be facing a younger one with more than enough power to take advantage of him if he suddenly can’t take a hard shot anymore without dropping for the 10 count.

It doesn’t matter that Rios isn’t a great fighter. He won’t need to because he’s dealing with an older fighter who has lost his last two fights and is coming off of a brutal knockout.



Comments are closed.