By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes Manny Pacquiao will be the same fighter he’s always been when he steps foot inside the ring in September against an opponent still to be determined. Arum doesn’t think Pacquiao vicious 6th round TKO loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last December will make him more susceptible to getting knocking out in his future fights because he didn’t take a beating in the fight.
Pacquiao was just knocked out from a single right hand punch. In Arum’s view, if a fighter gets knocked out from one punch rather than knocked out at the end of the beating, then they’ll be okay.
Arum said to hustleboss.com “I’ve seen fighters get knocked out as decisively as Pacquiao, and come back stronger than ever. One thing about boxing is if a guy gets knocked out after taking a beating, then it has an effect on him. If a fighter gets knocked out as a result of one punch it doesn’t have much of an effect on them.”
I don’t agree with what Arum is saying, and it just sounds like wishful thinking on his part. I’ve seen plenty of fighters that were knocked out from a single shot, and then in their future fights they seemed to get knocked much easier than they had before they were ever knocked out. I can’t tell the difference between a fighter that was knocked out after a terrible beating and one that was knocked out with a single shot.
I think in both cases the fighter can be negatively affected by the KO. In even in the NFL, you see quarterbacks take a helmet to helmet hit, and suffer a concussion. It’s one shot thing. And then you see them suffering additional concussions over and over again within a short period of time.
Those quarterbacks didn’t take a serious beating to the head followed by a knockout. They took one big shot and then they suffered a concussion from that.
I believe it doesn’t matter how a fighter is knocked out. They can have problems either way. It doesn’t mean that they will have problems, but it’s definitely possible no matter how it comes about.
I think Arum is kidding himself if he really believes his theory on how fighters are affected from knockouts. It may work out that Pacquiao will be the same fighter he once was previous to the knockout, but it also could be that he’ll have problems taking hard head shots. We won’t know until he gets back in the ring.
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