By Chris Williams: Brandon Rios’s trainer Robert Garcia says he expects to see 2-3 more fights between Rios and Filipino Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) after their November 23rd fight in Macao, China. Garcia has been training Rios specifically with one goal mind for the Pacquiao fight and that’s to knock him clean out to make sure he gets the victory.
With another knockout loss, Pacquiao will be in a situation where he almost has to fight Rios again in order to try and redeem himself.
Garcia said to the Koncrete Jungle “I’m training Brandon to win the fight. Brandon is going out there to knock Pacquiao out…fans are going to see fight of the year, and possibly 2 or 3 fights against each other…fans are going to want to see a rematch.”
Pacquiao is going to get hit with some big shots from Rios in this fight, and his chin might not be up to the mark to take those big punches. I’m not sure about 3rd fight, but I definitely see Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach looking to get a 2nd one after this because they can’t walk from a knockout loss to Rios. But they will have to walk away if Pacquiao gets stopped twice by Rios. It’s retirement time at that point for Pacquiao. It would be academic at that point that he has to retire because it’ll be his 3rd straight KO loss, and if he can’t even beat Rios, then who can Pacquiao beat?
Rios hasn’t been shy about voicing his goal for the Pacquiao bout by saying that he wants to KO him and send him into retirement.
Rios wants to be the guy that finishes Pacquiao off by putting him out of his misery. Juan Manuel Marquez got to him first with his 6th round knockout of Manny past December, but Rios wants to be the guy that has his name in the record book as the one that finished off Pacquiao. There’s no better way to finish him of than to KO him with a similar knockout as Marquez scored with Rios poleaxing Pacquiao with a devastating right hand or left hook.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum took a real gamble in choosing Rios of all people for the Filipino to fight instead of a soft job like you normally put fighters in after they’ve been brutally knocked out. Arum’s problem is he doesn’t have any weak fighters in his Top Rank stable, so it was kind of a situation where Pacquiao had little choice to fight a someone good. That’s where you’d like to have seen Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz to have stepped in and said no to the idea of Pacquiao fighting Rios, and instead asking for an opponent without power, because there’s no way of knowing how he’ll react to getting hit hard with head shots in this fight.
It’s not as if Rios is just going to stand there covering up in a clam-shell defense like Joshua Clottey, one of Pacquiao’s past opponents. Rios is happy to get the fight, but he’s just going to cover up like a sparring partner for 12 rounds. He’s coming to win this fight and will be looking to take Pacquiao’s head off with each punch he throws.
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