By Chris Williams: Michael Koncz, the close personal adviser for Filipino fighter Manny Pacquiao, says that Pacquiao doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon, and that he trainer Freddie Roach don’t see any signs of Pacquiao deteriorating in ability despite Pacquiao ending up face down on the canvas last Saturday by Juan Manuel Marquez in a 6th round knockout loss.
Koncz told RingTV “Manny will 100 percent continue fighting…There are no signs of deterioration, because it was Manny’s best fight…We saw a lot of improvement…He’ll fight again.”
Yes, some improvement, Pacquiao getting knocked down twice and knocked cold. The improvement that Koncz is talking about is Pacquiao using in an out attacks and moving around the ring. However, those are kind of standard things that Pacquiao has always done as a fighter, and I don’t see that any kind of improvement just because he did what he always does.
I think Koncz is kidding himself if thinks Pacquiao is improving. If anything, he’s getting worse because he was getting knocked down left and right by Marquez in any of their previous fights before last Saturday, so I’m not quite sure what he means by saying he sees Pacquiao improving. To me, Pacquiao looked like he is getting worse as a fighter, not better. Pacquiao was rushing Marquez and getting tagged, and he wide open on defense for the entire fight. Roach should have been working on reminding Pacquiao to keep his guard up because he was hit in a lot of instances with his guard down.
Koncz went on to call the knockout shot a “Lucky” rather than from the skill of Marquez. I don’t know how Koncz can call that a lucky shot because if you watch it on replay all Marquez did was back up, wait and load up on his right hand. As soon as Pacquiao was in punching range, Marquez slugged him in the head. How is that lucky? That was pure skill from Marquez. It might have been Pacquiao’s dumb luck that he had his guard down at the time that Marquez tagged him, but that wasn’t luck just because Marquez punched a wide open Pacquiao in the head. That was the end result of Pacquiao bum rushing Marquez with his guard down.
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