By Allan Fox: Roy Jones Jr., who is no stranger to being knocked out, says he’s taking a wait and see approach about whether Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) is back from his brutal knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez from last December. Jones Jr. says Pacquiao has done the right thing in taking a year off from the sport, and he thinks it’s a positive that he’s not someone that has had to take off weight for him to fight. But Jones Jr. says he’s still very interested in seeing whether Pacquiao can take a hard shot from Pacquiao’s opponent Brandon Rios in their fight this Saturday night in Macao, China.
Jones Jr. said via ESPN “I want to see how Manny takes the first clean punch landed by Rios, and then I’ll know how he is. Even Pacquiao doesn’t know how he is right now or he will react to that first big punch. But Manny did the right thing. He took almost a year off. He’s isn’t suffering from a weight-loss situation…He gave his body a chance to rest and it was the smartest thing he could have done.”
Taking time off from the sport was definitely a wise move for Pacquiao, because initially he wanted to get back in the ring and fight in April, but he was talked out of it. But it might not matter how much time off Pacquiao has taken because he looked like he was a declining fighter before the knockout loss, so it’s reasonable to assume that the year off from boxing didn’t turn the aging clock backwards for Pacquiao. He wasn’t looking like the once dominant fighter he previously was before the KO, and it’s reasonable to assume that sitting out of the ring for 11 months isn’t going to transform the 35-year-old Pacquiao into a 25-year-old.
Pacquiao’s ability to take a punch is just one part of the equation that could possibly trip him up on Saturday night against the tailor-made for him fighter Brandon Rios. But even Pacquiao can take Rios’ best shots, Pacquiao still might lose to him simply because he’s a 35-year-old guy coming off of a long layoff with a lot of ring wear on him. Jones Jr. is forgetting about those factors as well.
At 35, Jones Jr. was pretty much a shot fighter, and that’s the same for a lot of guys in the sport when they hit their mid-30s. Can Pacquiao beat Rios? It’ll depend on how he reacts to getting hit a lot by Rios. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has found the right kind of fighter that he’s done well against through his career. Pacquiao will have to prove that he can still beat these types of fighters on Saturday night.
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