By Chris Williams: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is impressed with Manny Pacquiao’s hand speed and talent in going into Manny’s November 23rd fight against Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s), but Golovkin isn’t sure if Pacquiao has fully recovered from his vicious knockout he suffered against Juan Manuel Marquez 10 months ago last December. Between that knockout loss and Rios’s good punch, Golovkin doesn’t know whether Pacquiao can win this fight.
Golovkin said to Hustleboss “Brandon has a big chance. He’s a good fighter. He’s got a strong punch, and good courage.” When asked whether he thinks Pacquiao has recovered from his brutal knockout loss, Golovkin scrunched up his face in a way that showed doubt and said “I don’t know, seriously.”
Golovkin is basically showing his concern about whether Manny can be the same fighter after the way that he was knocked cold by Marquez. Golovkin isn’t the only one that wonders whether Pacquiao can ever recover from that kind of knockout. There a lot of fans and fighters wondering the same thing because there have been so many fighters in the past there were never the same after getting starched like that.
Pacquiao says that he’s been knocked out before, and that’s not a problem. But I’ve seen the fights where Pacquiao has been stopped previous to the Marquez fight, and he was never knocked out like that. The KO that Pacquiao suffered in the Marquez fight was a much different animal compared to the one that he experienced in the past. Everything is different about.
Pacquiao was knocked cold, he didn’t look good before that, and he’s a much older fighter now compared to in the past. He’s got a lot more mileage on him now compared to earlier in his career, so you can’t expect him to handle a KO in the same way than when he was 18 or 21.
Golovkin thinks Rios could end up like Antonio Margarito did if he’s unable to knock Pacquiao out. Golovkin thinks Manny’s hand speed and quicker feet could give Rios a lot of the same problems that Margarito experienced in their fight. But things are a little different now compared to back when Pacquiao fought Margarito.
First off, the Pacquiao-Margarito fight took place three years ago when Pacquiao was just 31. This was before Pacquiao had started to show signs of aging. In 2009-2010, Pacquiao was still more or less in his prime.
Margarito had already been through a lot of wars and had been stopped by Shane Mosley. Rios hasn’t been beaten like that. His loss to Mike Alvarado was a situation where he couldn’t cut off the ring to force Alvarado to fight him in a prolonged war like he had in their first fight.
Pacquiao will do Rios’ job for him by coming straight at him to mix it up a lot. The only time Pacquiao backs away is when he gets hit by a hard shot, but even then he keeps coming back for more exchanges. In other words, Rios won’t have to go looking for the Filipino because he’ll likely be right in front of him all night. This in turn will increase Rios’s chances to knock him out.