By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is incredibly excited about the November 24th fight between the recently beaten Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) and Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.
Both fighters are coming off of losses and in Pacquiao’s case, he’s coming off of two straight losses. The fight will still be on HBO pay per view regardless and the fight is being staged in Macau so that Pacquiao doesn’t have to pay the U.S tax rate on the loot he gets from American fans.
Rios will have to pay the normal rate, though, and he’s expected to make above $6 million guaranteed. With the PPV upside, he could make a ton of good green cash. It’s unclear how much he’ll end up with after the U.S taxes take their slice of the pie.
Arum said to hustleboss.com “I think it’s going to be a terrific fight, an all-action fight. The kind of fight people want to see…it’s going to be a knockdown, drag out, bang, bang kind of fight. That’s the only way Brandon Rios fights.”
It could end up badly for Arum’s money fighter Pacquiao because if there are any knockdowns in this fight, I don’t think it’s going to be Rios. That guy can take terrible punishment without flinching, and he’s not going to be bothered by Pacquiao’s shots.
The fighter that we could see eating the canvas is Pacquiao, especially if he decides to get macho and trade with Rios. I wouldn’t recommend him doing that after the way Pacquiao was knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez last December. He should be looking to fight as defensively as possible to keep from getting put down again.
Marquez had Pacquiao down twice in that fight and had him looking like an old fighter. You can explain away the 2nd knockdown of Pacquiao not seeing the shot, but what can you say about the first time he was dropped in the fight in the 3rd round. That just looked like he couldn’t take Marquez’s power.
That was with Marquez loading up completely with that punch. Rios can punch like that with every shot he throws. It’s effortless with him and he’s got a powerful jab that can hurt the Filipino if he remembers to throw it. Rios staggered Mike Alvarado with his jab last March and probably would have won the fight had he the sense enough to continue using his jab. Instead, Rios stopped throwing jabs and ended up getting out-boxed.
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