By Chris Williams: 34-year-old Manny Pacquiao made it through his first sparring sessions in the Philippines without getting knocked out in his preparation for his November 23rd fight against Brandon Rios in Macao, China. Pacquiao sparred with 2nd tier fighters welterweight Frederick Lawson and junior middleweight Marlon Alta.
This wasn’t the guys that Pacquiao has sparred in the past with the hard hitting Ruslan Provodnikov and Raymundo Beltran.
Pacquiao did well against the little known Alta, according to RingTV, and was able to dominate the bigger fighter. The same for Lawson, who reportedly spent much of the time moving around rather than engaging.
It seems that Pacquiao’s team should have done a better job in looking for sparring partners that are similar to Rios, because neither of the sparring partners they have now are going to prepare Pacquiao for what’s in store for him on November 23rd.
If it was intentional to get guys that wouldn’t give Pacquiao problems during sparring, then it’s understandable why they would have selected Alta and Lawson. But in that case Pacquiao’s team shouldn’t have wasted their time in offering them $1,500 if they can knock Pacquiao down in the sparring sessions.
We’re talking about fighters from different levels here, and you can’t expect them to knock Pacquiao down when they’re making such a huge step up in competition in sparring with him.
The general consensus from the workout was that Pacquiao looked fast, and performed better than he had in his sparring sessions before his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. That’s not surprising because Pacquiao is coming off of a long layoff, he hasn’t been hit during the 10 months out of the ring, he’s facing sparring partners that are arguably a big step down in talent from his normal sparring partners, and he’s highly motivated to show boxing fans that he still has it.
The last factor is pretty huge because a lot of fans think the Filipino is over-the-hill after his 6th round knockout loss to Marquez, and his 12 round decision defeat against Tim Bradley.
We’re not going to learn anything about whether Pacquiao is a shot fighter from him sparring the likes of Lawson and Alta. Those guys aren’t good enough to really test Pacquiao, and besides that, he’s wearing head gear. The real test is when he steps inside the ring to face Rios on November 23rd.
I wonder if Pacquiao’s team will be bringing in any really good sparring partners to test him. My guess is now. The guy just got knocked clean out by Marquez, so it looks they may coddle Pacquiao by putting him in with soft jobs to get his confidence up. He’s going to need all the confidence he can get if he wants to have a chance to beat Rios.
It’s not going to help Pacquiao if they don’t have him fighting quality sparring partners because he’s going to be in for a huge shock when he gets in the ring with Rios and he doesn’t have the head gear to protect him for each time Rios nails him with a big head shot.
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