By Manuel Perez: With less than a month to go before the huge showdown between Manny Pacquiao (48-3-2, 36 KOs) and Ricky Hatton (45-1, 32 KOs), I’m seeing this more and more as a blowout victory for Hatton. Never mind bizarre comments from Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach about Pacquiao stopping Hatton in three rounds, that’s not happening. If anything, it’s going to be the other way around.
Pacquiao, 30, is coming into this fight with little real world experience in recent years having fought largely soft opponents since 2004. Indeed, of Pacquiao’s last 12 fights, only two of them have been against what I consider to be fighters that were on the top of the sport in Juan Manuel Marquez and Erik Morales.
As it turns out, Morales defeated Pacquiao by a 12 round decision in March 2005, and Marquez was given a bad deal by losing a 12-round decision that many people around the world (including this writer) believe was unjust. Marquez looked to have defeated Pacquiao in March 2008 but lost by a split decision.
However, that’s pretty much it for the top fighters that Pacquiao has fought in the past five years. You can’t count Oscar De La Hoya because he was in terrible physical shape because of the drastic steps he took to make the 147 pound weight limit, and he was also way past his prime at an old 35.
Pacquiao’s two victories over Morales in rematches also can be discounted because in each case, Morales had to battle hard to make weight and came into both fights weight drained and not the same fighter that entered the ring in 2005 to defeat Pacquiao.
It was almost identical to how weight drained De La Hoya was in his fight with Pacquiao, but in the case of Morales I think he was even in worse shape than De La Hoya. Obviously, Morales had been forced to take off too much weight for his body to handle at his age and thus he wasn’t in the best of shape for their two rematches.
Pacquiao also has wins over Oscar Larios, Marco Antonio Barrera, Jorge Solis, David Diaz, and Hector Velazquez during the past five years, none of which I see as being at the top of their game at the time that Pacquiao fought them. Larios, Solis, Velazquez and Diaz I don’t see as being truly even near the level of Hatton, so they can be eliminated effectively as comparable competition for this fight.
Barrera didn’t have the power or the speed to handle Pacquiao and by the time that he fought Manny, Barrera had already been in one too many wars with Erik Morales and wasn’t the same fighter he was several years earlier.
All in all, I see only the first fight with Morales and second fight with Marquez as being Pacquiao’s only tough opposition in the past five years, with the remainder being soft opponents. Given Pacquiao’s lack of opposition over the past 12 fights, and the way he’s fought in his only two hard fights during that time, I have conclude that Pacquiao is going to lose badly to Hatton on May 2nd.
I can see Pacquiao making it to the final bell, but only if he listens to Roach and runs the 2nd half of the fight. If Pacquiao tries to have serious exchanges with Hatton in the last six rounds, Pacquiao will be taken out hard. He’s too small and hasn’t helped himself by fighting less than the best competition over the past five years. It’s hard to blame Pacquiao because he’s been paid well regardless of who he’s fought, but the fact remains he’s not prepared for fighter in the class of Hatton.
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