By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Sr. wasn’t impressed with Manny Pacquiao’s opponent Brandon Rios last Saturday night, as he feels that Rios showed that he didn’t have any skills in that fight. Mayweather Sr. says that fight wasn’t nearly enough for Pacquiao to show that he’s redeemed himself from his losses to Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Mayweather Sr. says that if Pacquiao wants to redeem himself and get a bout against Floyd Mayweather Jr., then he’s going to need to beat Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and/or Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero. If he can beat one or both of them, then Mayweather Sr. says Pacquiao deserves a fight against Floyd Jr.
Mayweather Sr. said via Jazzyn Jeff “To me, Brandon Rios can’t fight. In what I just saw of him, I don’t see no skills, no knowledge about boxing. I don’t call that redeeming himself. To do that he needs to fight Alvarez or Guerrero. If he can whip one of them, then it’s time to get it on.”
Canelo would be too big and too strong for Pacquiao. I can’t see that fight happening because Pacquiao would probably insist on Canelo coming down all the way to 147 for them to fight and that would be a deal breaker. I think Pacquiao would lose to Canelo if that fight were made, and I don’t think for a second that Arum would let Pacquiao take that fight, even if it were possible to put that match together. Pacquiao beating Guerrero wouldn’t be enough for Pacquiao to redeem himself either because Guerrero isn’t that special. Guerrero struggled to beat Selcuk Aydin. But it is a good idea to make Pacquiao agree to fight Canelo in order to get to Floyd, because that would at least give Pacquiao a real fight to show whether he still has it.
It would also help build up a fight between Pacquiao and Mayweather if Pacquiao could do a better job on Canelo than Mayweather did. But what Arum is going to do is match Pacquiao against Tim Bradley again followed by Ruslan Provodnikov. Those aren’t big enough fights to prove anything for Pacquiao. Arum will obviously try and match Pacquiao back up with 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez as well, but that’s not big fight either. That’s just the guy that Arum keeps putting in with Pacquiao because he brings a lot of fans, but not because Marquez is the best welterweight or even close to being the best.
Mayweather Sr. is right about a win over Rios not being enough for Pacquiao to redeem himself. It was a tune-up bout against one of his promoter Bob Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters and nothing more than that. Rios was soundly beaten in his last fight before that against Mike Alvarado, and he also was easily beaten last year by Richard Abril in a fight where the judges scored it a 12 round split decision. One judge scored it 117-111 for Abril, and that seemed to be the correct score of the fight. But the other two judges scored it for Rios despite him getting easily out-boxed. Rios would later blame his poor performance on being weight drained, but he looked just as bad in his losses to Alvarado and Pacquiao, so you can’t really say he was bad because of weight loss.
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