Roy Jones Jr: Pacquiao will have problems with Rios if he doesn’t finish him

By Boxing News - 11/04/2013 - Comments

pac96By Chris Williams: Roy Jones Jr. believes that Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) could find himself in a world of hurt on November 23rd if he’s unable to stop Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) in their Macao, China based fight. Jones Jr. thinks that if Pacquiao just knocked Rios down without getting him out of here early, he could be in for a really tough time when Rios gets off the deck and starts going to war with him. In fact, Roy sees Rios knocking Pacquiao out unless Pacquiao can get to him first. If Pacquiao can’t blast Rios out of there early in this fight, then he’s going to get stopped by him.

Jones Jr. told On the Ropes Boxing Radio”If Pacquiao drops him and then he doesn’t finish him off, then Pacquiao is gonna have his hands full. The fight won’t go the distance because if he don’t finish Brandon, then Brandon will finish him.”

I agree with Jones Jr. Pacquiao absolutely has to stop Rios in order to win this fight because if he’s unable to break his iron chin to get a stoppage, Rios is going to be all over Pacquiao nailing him with huge power shots. We already saw what happened to Pacquiao in his last fight when he was hit hard twice by Juan Manuel Marquez last December. Pacquiao hit the canvas twice, and those were the only two times in the fight that Marquez hit him hard. Rios punches like that with every shot he throws, and it’s scary to think what he’ll do to Pacquiao once he starts landing his big punches.

Some of Pacquiao’s fans think that Rios will be another Antonio Margarito for Pacquiao, and that he’ll be little more than a punching bag for as long as the fight lasts. These same fans think that Pacquiao will easily be able to avoid Rios’ shots by fighting in an in and out style the way that he did against Margarito. I don’t see it happening like that. I don’t think Pacquiao could even beat Margarito now if you could transfer that version of Margarito into the ring to fight the 34-year-old Pacquiao on November 23rd. Pacquiao doesn’t move as well as he did back then, and his punch resistance appears to have diminished as well. In his last three fights, Pacquiao doesn’t seem capable of fighting as hard as he did back then. He seems to have really gone down hill.

I think Margarito would destroy Pacquiao if he were to be in the ring with this version of him. Rios is faster than Margarito ever was, and he’s a lot better at cutting off the ring and throwing short punches. I see him as a much superior fighter than Margarito, and that’s bad news for Pacquiao because he’s not going to be able to stay in there for 12 rounds with Rios nailing him with his biggest shots. That doesn’t mean Pacquiao can’t win. But it does mean that he;s going to need to KO Rios quickly for him to have a chance of winning this fight.



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