By Manuel Perez: As I’ve watched Manny Pacquiao’s two fights with Juan Manuel Marquez, I’ve found out that the trick to beating Pacquiao is to attack him to the body because he doesn’t seem to like getting hit in the midsection. Ricky Hatton is probably the worst opponent imaginable for Pacquiao and on May 2nd, at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, we’ll see what happens when Pacquiao is faced with a pure body puncher like Hatton.
Pacquiao moves into this fight after beating David Diaz and an old Oscar De La Hoya, which seems to have given Pacquiao a false sense of his own omnipotence. I hope Pacquiao hasn’t gotten too drunk on his own press clippings because he’s proved nothing in beating those guys, because neither is in the class of Marquez, who should have been given the victories over Pacquiao on the two prior occasions that the two fighters met up.
Understandably, Pacquiao has shown no interest in wanting to fight Marquez a third time and has turned in the opposite direction looking for easier marks. This time Pacquiao has made a huge miscalculation by selecting Britain’s Ricky Hatton, because the little bulldog is going to rip Pacquiao to shreds and treat him like a toy poodle.
Hatton isn’t going to do it with heads, but rather by taking advantage of Pacquiao’s problems with taking hard body shots to the rib cage. Hatton will plant himself next to Pacquiao all night and pound away on Pacquiao’s midsection, take the fight out of him and then in all probability knock him out.
I saw this happening the second this fight was signed, and thought that Pacquiao made a big mistake by deciding on fighting Hatton. I don’t think Hatton’s unbeatable mind you, because he’s already been proven to be mortal by Floyd Mayweather Jr.
The difference here is that Mayweather Jr. was able to take Hatton’s body shots, but Pacquiao won’t. I saw in Mayweather Jr’s prior fights that he could handle big body punches, so I knew that Hatton was in trouble in that fight going in.
When I discovered that Joe Cortez, a referee that is often strict about controlling inside fighting, I further knew that Hatton was in trouble in that fight. But, against Pacquiao, this is going to be an easy fight for Hatton, because he’s all wrong for Pacquiao.
I see Hatton breaking Pacquiao down rather quickly after several rounds of hard body shots, knocking him down and eventually out. I also can see a lot of excuses being brewed up later on by Freddie Roach to help ease the pain of the loss, something on the lines of stomach flu or something to that effect for Pacquiao.
It’s sad, because a person needs to face up to their losses. Hatton is and always was a superior fighter to Pacquiao, that’s just the plain truth. If Hatton and Pacquiao fought at the same weight their entire careers, Hatton would always win regardless.
He’s stronger and just made to beat a fighter like Pacquiao. I see Hatton as being the equivalent of a George Foreman for Joe Frazier. No matter how many times Frazier fought Foreman, he would always lose.
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