By Dave Lahr: Freddie Roach and Manny Pacquiao may not have thought about this, but what happens if Antonio Margarito isn’t phased by Pacquiao’s shots, and just walks right through them and starts beating the tar out of Pacquiao at close range. What will Roach do? Worse than that; what will Pacquiao do to stop the Mexican tornado? Bob Arum is the one that wants the Margarito-Pacquiao fight, because he thinks it’s going to be a bout that will sell well to the boxing public. I kind of doubt it, but when you promote both of the fighters involved, you’re going to do really well even if it doesn’t bring in the monster numbers that a Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout would bring in.
The last thing that Arum wants is his cash cow Pacquiao beaten black and blue by Margarito. Arum just wants an exciting fight. He won’t want Pacquiao to become damaged in the Margarito fight and destroyed. That would be really bad news for Arum. But when you’re dealing with a bigger slugger like Margarito, whose entire career has been based on slugging it out in the trenches against bigger fighter than Pacquiao, it’s feasible that Margarito could give Pacquiao a beating he won’t soon forget and stop him.
Pacquiao has moved up a number of different weight classes in the past three years and now he’s moved up to junior middleweight. This is the big boys Pacquiao’s dealing with now, and even though he’s got a handicap working for him in the Margarito fight with the 150 pound catch weight, it may not be enough for Pacquiao to slow Margarito down. I can see things getting quickly out of hand if Margarito doesn’t respect Pacquiao’s power and walks right through them. Pacquiao would then be forced to take Margarito’s shots and he tends to throw a lot of punches. If Margarito is throwing 100 punches per round and Pacquiao is throwing just as many, I don’t like Pacquiao’s chances of being able to hold up under those kinds of shots.
I mean look at Pacquiao’s last fight against Joshua Clottey. Pacquiao was hit only 10 to 15 times per round from Clottey, which is a pretty anemic punch output if you ask me. Yet Pacquiao’s face looked like it had been run over by a tractor trailer by the end of the fight. This tells me that Pacquiao can dish it out just fine, but he’s having more and more problems taking the shots that are coming at him. Can you imagine what would have happened to Pacquiao if Clottey had thrown 100 punches per round? Pacquiao would have had to have been scraped of the canvas with a giant spatula and thrown on a stretcher like it was a big plate.
And Margarito hits even harder than Clottey. With Margarito’s high punch volume working for him in this fight, and with his good chin, I think Arum is going to be sad and gloomy by the end of the fight on November 13th, wishing he hadn’t put the bout together.
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