Brandon Rios: I’m going to KO Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 08/05/2013 - Comments

rios300By Chris Williams: Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) wants to not only beat former 8 division world champion Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) on November 23rd, he wants to beat him so there’s no doubt who the better man is, and the way he wants to prove that is by knocking him out.

Rios has obviously see Pacquiao’s first three fights against Juan Manuel Marquez in the past, and seen how Pacquiao got 2 controversial wins as well as a controversial draw in fights where boxing fans in large numbers saw Marquez winning.

Marquez himself decided he wasn’t going to let the judges have any say so in his last fight with Pacquiao, which is why he knocked him out cold in the 6th round to keep the fight from going to the score cards.

Rios said to esnewsreporting “I’m going to win, and I’m going to knock Pacquiao out.”

Rios is likely going to put pressure on Pacquiao by coming forward for 12 rounds, because if he lets Manny come to him, he’ll have to try and time him the way that Marquez did if he wants to KO him. That’s not as easy as coming forward and forcing Pacquiao into exchanges that Rios, with his superior size, will have a good chance of winning them.

Even if Rios is getting the worst of it for a 2 or 3 rounds, he’s eventually going to land something big to the head of Pacquiao, and when that happens we could see Pacquiao hit the canvas for the 10 count.

Pacquiao is coming off a bad knockout loss to Marquez, and you just don’t know how Pacquiao’s going to react to getting hit hard in this fight. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum felt that a tune up fight wasn’t necessary for some reason for Pacquiao, and this kind of reminds me how Antonio Margarito was put in with Miguel Cotto coming off of three separate eye surgeries.

Margarito arguably should have taken a tune-up, but he didn’t and his surgically repaired right eye puffed up and eventually caused the fight to be halted. I’d hate to see Pacquiao get put down on the canvas and knocked cold by Rios in his first fight back from the KO loss to Marquez. At least with a tune-up, if Pacquiao showed any signs of being hurt by a lesser fighter, they could have him take more time off before putting him back in with quality fighters.



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