By Chris Williams: The overriding theme of last night’s HBO 24/7 Pacquiao/Bradley episode 1 was Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) talking about wanting to get back his long lost aggressiveness that abandoned him 1,600 yesterday’s ago when he last scored a knockout over Miguel Cotto in November of 2012. Pacquiao talked last night about how he’s training to get the aggressiveness back for his April 12th fight against Bradley at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“We’re focusing on more aggressiveness and throwing more punches,” Pacquiao said. “That’s what we’re looking for. I should put more on gas and aggressiveness. I will bring back the aggressiveness and the killer instinct that he wants to see. It’s good. It’s kind of challenging me.”
The rest of the episode was basically a rehash of their previous fight, and how both guys felt they won. Bradley hates the idea that he didn’t get any credit for his win over Pacquiao the last time out, and he wants to prove beyond a doubt in the rematch that he’s the better fighter.
All of this stuff has already been played out in their press conferences together, but for casual fans who haven’t followed any of this, they got a chance to hear the two fighters for the first time discuss the issues that surrounded their previous fight.
Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach are certain that they’re going to set the clock back 5 years and come into this fight on April 12th with the aggressiveness that Pacquiao has long lost. I seriously doubt that’s possible. You just don’t have that kind of a huge gap in between knockouts and then suddenly come out and destroy guys. I don’t believe for a second that Pacquiao hasn’t been knocking guys out because he’s been too nice.
I believe that his body changed after the Cotto fight, and he aged to the point where he could no longer knockout decent quality opposition. He’s not faced a lot of good opponents since the Cotto fight, so he should have been able to score a lot of knockouts. He’s no longer doing that, even against guys that were idea opposition for him to KO like Antonio Margarito, Brandon Rios and Shane Mosley. Like I said, I think Pacquiao’s body aged after the Cotto fight, and that’s why he’s not knocking guys out.
It’s no secret that Pacquiao took a lot of punishment to the head in the Cotto fight, and that might be the reason why he’s not knocking guys out. It might have taken something out of the Filipino star to where he couldn’t get a knockout because he’s not able to replicate the way he used to fight. If you compare the all-action versions of Pacquiao that beat the likes of Oscar De La Hoya and Cotto to the ones that went the distance with the likes of Joshua Clottey, Mosley, Rios and Margarito, it seems pretty clear that the energy level is way down for Pacquiao.
Maybe you can blame that on Pacquiao not training as hard with his former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza. It’s impossible to say for sure what the reasons are for Pacuqiao’s knockout dry spell. But what you can say is that it’s very unlikely that he’s going to turn things around and start knocking out guys at this point in his career.
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