By Chris Williams: George Foreman believes that Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) has a chance to pitch a shutout against Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) in their fight on November 23rd in Macao, China. Foreman thinks that Rios will be thrown off from having to travel all the way to China where the time difference could throw Rios off a lot more than Pacquiao, who comes from the nearby Philippines.
For Pacquiao, he only has to travel a little over 800 miles to get to Macao, China. In contrast, Rios has to travel 7,000 miles from California to Macao, China.
Foreman said “Pacquiao, because he lives in the area, it’s probably going to be a shut out if he is on his game at all. I give Pacquiao the hometown decision. How about a home-region decision.”
That would be bad if Pacquiao wins a home-regions decision because he already has those controversial wins and the controversial draw against Juan Manuel Marquez in fights that many boxing fans felt that Marquez won all of them. Hopefully the judges get the decision right and give it to the better man. What the sport doesn’t need is the wrong guy getting his hand raised in this fight.
I’m not sure that Rios will be negatively affected by the fight taking place in China because he’s going to make sure that he gets to Macao early for the fight at least 1 week before the fight to get acclimated to the region. He’s not going to make the mistake of flying 14 hours the day of the fight. He obviously knows that would be a recipe for a defeat. But there’s no question that the fans will be rooting for Pacquiao in this match-up because he’s the more popular fighter of the two, so it makes sense that the large Chinese crowd will be supporting him. Whether this will be enough to motivate Pacquiao enough to fight any harder than he normally does remains to be seen. I doubt that he’ll fight any harder than he normally does because he’s coming off of a knockout loss and he won’t want to take any risks that he gets hit with something big.
We could see Pacquiao get old on November 23rd with Rios giving him a beating and getting a stoppage. If Rios wins the fight, I don’t think he’s going to let the judges have a say so. If he wins, it’s going to be by a vicious knockout similar to the Pacquiao’s loss to Juan Manuel Marquez. There won’t be any judges that will be able to change what happens in the ring in this fight if Rios gets the ‘W’.
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