Rios said to Marcos Villegas “He’s not as quick as he used to be. He’s getting cramps now. He’s getting old.”
Pacquiao’s leg cramps are going to keep him from moving effectively if he suffers this problem against Rios on November 23rd. Pacquiao is a good puncher and he has fast hands still, but if he’s forced to stand in the pocket for 12 rounds against Rios, we could see Pacquiao getting knocked cold again. He needs to be able to move because he’s probably not going to be able to take Rios’ big shots for long without getting knocked down or knocked out. But even if Pacquiao is able to move well, he’s still going to be vulnerable against Rios because he’s going to be forced into a lot of exchanges whether he wants to or not. That’s the thing with Rios. He forces you to trade with him by cutting off the ring on you, making you throw down just to try and survive. It could ultimately mean survival for Pacquiao in terms of him being able to fight his way out of tight spots.
Rios badly wants to not only beat Pacquiao but knock him out and send him into retirement because Rios wants to have his name as the stamp for the guy that finished off Pacquiao. Anytime people mention Pacquiao’s name in the future, it’ll be hard not to think of Rios if he’s the one that sends Pacquiao packing his bags for the retirement home.
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach isn’t talking as much for this fight as he was in Pacquiao’s last one against Juan Manuel Marquez. For months, Roach was saying endlessly how he wanted to bring back Pacquiao to what he was when he was 25-years-old by having him fight in an all-out manner to try and get Marquez out of there.
To Roach, that was the missing ingredient to why Pacquiao had started to look vulnerable in his recent fights. Unfortunately that strategy backfired on Roach with Pacquiao getting knocked out cold by Marquez in the 6th round. Roach isn’t saying anything now how he plans on having Pacquiao approach this fight with Rios, and I’m not surprised by that.
Roach had so much egg on his face from the last fight that he doesn’t want to start with his talk of trying to put Pacquiao into a time machine to get him back to being a young fighter. You can expect Roach to have Pacquiao fight with a lot more caution against Rios because he knows he can’t afford to sent Pacquiao flying forward at Rios the way he did with Marquez because the chances are too high that Pacquiao will get knocked cold again. What we’ll likely see then is Pacquiao fighting in brief bursts but not in the same speedy manner as he did before because he won’t want to get caught with something big by Rios and end up getting poleaxed again.