Rios: Pacquiao, Roach and fans are counting me out

By Boxing News - 10/22/2013 - Comments

rios59By Chris Williams: An angry Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) was practically snarling in a recent interview this week about how he feels that he’s being counted out by the boxing establishment about his upcoming fight against Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) next month on November 23rd. Rios thinks everyone is talking about Pacquiao facing Ruslan Provodnikov and acting as if a win over him is a forgone conclusion instead of it being a 50-50 fight.

Rios has been making a list of the people who are counting him out and he plans on telling these people where to stick it after he beats Pacquiao. Rios says he’s glad that he’s being overlooked, because it’s giving him motivation to want to beat Pacquiao even worse than he already does.

Rios told Hustleboss “They’re counting me out. They’re going to find out on November 23rd. Freddie Roach is counting me out. Pacquiao is counting me out. Some of the HBO people are counting me out. Max Kellerman is counting me out. At the end of the day I’m going to tell them f*** you. Don’t try to kiss my a** now. You know what motivates me right now? It’s the critics. They’re already counting me out.”

Rios needs to simmer down a bit. It’s natural for Pacquiao’s opponents to be discounted, and it kind of goes with the territory. Pacquiao has been around for a long time, so it’s normal that the fans are going to think that he’ll win. The fans are thinking of Pacquiao in terms of what he was in the past when he was younger, and many of them are not seeing him what he is now – an aging fighter with two straight losses and coming off a brutal knockout.

A lot of fans have a hard time seeing changes in their fighters and they continue to grasp onto images of what that fighter was years ago rather than what he is now. It takes fans awhile before they’re able to see the changes – for better or worse – in their favorite fighter. The good news is eventually these fans are able to take stock of what their favorite guy has become. In the case of Pacquiao, fans will likely hold onto their old memories of what he was in the past for a lot longer than normal fighters because they like him so much. They’ll keep holding onto those memories until it’s painfully obvious that Pacquiao is a shot fighter. Once that happens, you can expect a lot of Pacquiao’s fans to abandon ship and look for another fighter to fawn over.

Rios has an excellent chance of winning this fight against the 34-year-old Pacquiao. As long as Rios can make it through the first 5 rounds, he’ll have a really big chance of winning this fight. The longer the fight goes the better the chances are for Rios to win because Pacquiao’s chances of running into a big shot from Rios will increase the longer the fight lasts. At the same time we’ll likely see Pacquiao run out of gas like he did against Tim Bradley in the second half of their fight last year.



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