Rios says he’s going to retire Pacquiao; this will be his last fight

By Boxing News - 07/26/2013 - Comments

pac4By Chris Williams: Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) isn’t content with just beating the aging and badly struggling Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’) in their fight on November 23rd, Rios wants to send the 34-year-old into permanent retirement.

He wants to finish Pacquiao off and put him out of his misery. Pacquiao has certainly struggled recently, losing his last fight by a 6th round knockout to the Mexican warrior Juan Manuel Marquez last December, and getting beaten by Tim Bradley by a surprise upset last year in June.

Rios told Fightnews, “One Mexican [Marquez] knocked him out; this Mexican will retire him…I’m going to retire him after this.”

Rios is going to be pretty much all by himself as far as having any support for the Pacquiao fight in Macao, China at the Cotai Arena. With the fight being staged in China in order for Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum to open up the huge Chinese Market, Rios will be out there without any fan support.

This means it’s going to be even more important that he knocks Pacquiao out to make sure the fight doesn’t go to the cards, because if it does Rios could find himself in the same boat Marquez has in his first three fights with Pacquiao by either losing a highly controversial decision or ending up fighting to an equally controversial draw.

Marquez got to the point where he felt he had to knock Pacquiao out to make sure he got the decision, and that’s exactly what he did. Rios has an advantage in this fight because he’s catching Pacquiao at the right moment coming off of a bad knockout loss.

There’s a decent chance that if Rios lands something really hard to the head of Pacquiao, we could see him score a knockout and if not send Pacquiao into retirement, at least put him into a position where he’ll have a lot of soul-searching to do about whether he should continue his career.



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