By Esteban Garduno: Forget about the results of Saturday’s fight between Joshua Clottey (35-4, 20 KO’s) and Manny Pacquiao for a second. The real story on Saturday’s fight was Clottey’s clamshell defense. It was incredible the way that Clottey completely stifled Pacquiao’s offense. The Filipino was forced to throw over 1200 punches to try and get through Clottey’s airtight clamshell. It literally took Pacquiao that many punches to win the 12 round decision because Clottey shut him down completely with his defense. To watch the clam in process was very impressive.

Pacquiao tried as best as he could to land his shots, throwing a massive amount of them at a time, but Clottey would close the clam and smother Pacquiao’s shots. If only Clottey had remembered to throw a few more punches, he would beat the Filipino. He battered Pacquiao when he did throw punches and had Pacquiao looking badly beaten by the end of the fight.

In comparison, Clottey looked as if he hadn’t even been touched all night long. The reason for this is because of his clamshell defense. Clottey wasn’t letting anything in, and all Pacquiao was doing was throwing shots against the clam and having the blocked repeatedly. Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, was saying that Pacquiao was supposed to attack the body to get Clottey to lower the clam, but it didn’t work.

The reason it didn’t was because Pacquiao only made a token effort at throwing body shots during the fight. Roach should have known better than to try and get Pacquiao to throw body shots. Pacquiao is and always will be a head hunter. You can’t teach him to throw to the body with any consistency, because he just won’t.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered had Pacquiao even put in a big effort to throw body shots, because Clottey would have been free to land his right hands and left hooks to Pacquiao’s exposed face when he would try to throw to the body. Clottey was sensational on Saturday night. When his fighting days are over, I think he’d make a great trainer, at least on the defensive side of the game.

You can’t just copy the knowledge that Clottey has for blocking punches. He needs to show fighters because he has a lot of ability in that department. Offensively, Clottey has the tools but doesn’t use them for some reason. Some of it is fear, I guess, but the other part seems to be stamina issues that he suffers. It’s too bad because Clottey would be a champion if he threw more punches. He hits hard enough, and has more than good enough hand speed and size to be a champion.

It’s his poor work rate that keeps Clottey from dominating the welterweight division. If Clottey had been able to average 100 punches thrown per round on Saturday like Pacquiao, I have no doubts that Clottey would have beaten Manny. Clottey was much more accurate, had the better power and the better jab. All Clottey was missing was the work rate. He blocked most of Pacquiao’s shots with his clamshell defense and so he didn’t have to worry about that side of things.

Pacquiao looked weak and wide open on defense compared to Clottey. Pacquiao better stay away from Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather Jr. because those guys would carve Manny up if given the chance. I doubt they will.