By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao is going into tonight’s fight against Jeff Horn not having knocked out anybody in his last 12 fights dating back to 2009. In addition to his 8-year period of not having scored a knockout, Pacquiao (59-6-2, 38 KOs) has lost 3 out of his last 8 fights since 2012. Pacquiao’s record is 5-3 during the last 5 years of his career.
Pacquiao’s only wins have come against arguably no longer relevant welterweights like Tim Bradley, Jessie Vargas, Chris Algieri, and Brandon Rios. Tonight, Pacquio will be looking to finally score a knockout in facing the 29-year-old Australian Horn at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. Horn was hand-picked by Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum, who co-promotes the Australian fighter according to ESPN.
If Pacquiao can’t at least drop Horn 3 times in the fight, then he should think seriously about hanging up his gloves and retiring from boxing. Horn is a fighter that would likely be smashed by the good fighters in the welterweight division like Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia and Errol Spence Jr. Pacquiao needs to show that he belongs in the same class as those fighters, even if he never winds up facing any of them. Pacquiao has to jump on Horn and get him out of there in style tonight, because he’s facing a guy that is not talented and probably doesn’t belong anywhere near the top 15. The world Boxing Organization has Horn ranked at No.2 with their organization, but you’d be hard pressed to understand why. There’s nothing in Horn’s background that suggests that he belongs at No.2. His pro resume is filled with no names.
One thing that gives Pacquiao a chance to finally end his knockout streak is the rumors that Horn was weighing 154 pounds the day before the weigh-in. He’d been dropping weight obviously, and he still had 8 pounds to go. Horn made weight in coming in at 147, but he looked thin.
If Horn is weakened from the process of dehydrating, he could be vulnerable to getting knocked out tonight by Pacquiao. It’s likely that Horn will be close to 170 pounds when he gets inside the ring tonight. He’s a very big welterweight, who could fight at junior middleweight if he wanted to. Pacquiao will need to deal with Horn’s size and try and keep from getting hit too often.
Pacquiao is a significant favorite to beat Horn. It’s not surprising. He’s facing someone with zero experience in Horn. Arum had spoken last year of wanting to match Horn against some of his other Top Rank stable fighters Tim Bradley and Jessie Vargas in order to build him up for a big fight against Pacquiao. The big question is why did Arum choose to go straight to matching Horn against Pacquiao without building him up first?
Did Bradley and Vargas reject the idea of fighting an obscure fighter like Horn? It seems like a rush job by the 86-year-old Arum to throw Horn in with Pacquiao without at least doing some building up of the Australian fighter. How hard would it have been to put Horn in with at least 1 contender before matching him against Pacquiao? Of course, if there was concern that Horn lacked the talent to beat even a fringe contender in the welterweight division, then it’s understandable why no effort was made to try and build up Horn before putting him in with the 38-year-old Pacquiao. It obviously wasn’t a good sign to see Horn dropped on the seat of his pants by 43-year-old Randall Bailey and Ali Funeka recently. You can only imagine what a young Randall Bailey would have done to Horn.
Horn doesn’t have the experience to be in the ring with Pacquiao, but he’s facing him nonetheless. Fights like this usually end badly for the guy with no experience, but we’ll see tonight. Pacquiao is 38-years-old now, and no longer what he once was. He didn’t look great in his last fight against Jessie Vargas. Pacquiao was getting caught repeatedly with shots from Vargas, who isn’t one of the better fighters in the welterweight division. Vargas was a decent 140 pound fighter in the past, but he doesn’t belong at welterweight other than competing for the WBO belt, which has been changing hands between Top Rank fighters lately.
