By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has picked what many boxing fans feel is the guy with the perfect style for his fading fighter Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) to battle on November 23rd in Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, in Macao S.A.R., China.
Rios is a pure slugger who leads with his face and who is slow and easy to hit. Rios would be the perfect opponent for the younger Pacquiao to destroy, but the problem is Pacquiao isn’t young anymore.
Pacquiao is 34 now and a half a year away from 35. That’s old for a welterweight, especially one with as mileage on him like Pacquiao has. He’s been in a lot of grueling fights during his 18 year pro career and it looks like it’s starting to catch up to him now with him having lost his last two fights.
Arum might think putting Pacquiao in with an easy to hit guy like Rios will help bring back the old Pacquiao by letting him fight a guy that is made to order for his fighting style. But I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
Rios is the worst type of opponent for the aging Filipino now considering how he’s coming off of a knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez and we don’t know whether he’s going to be able to take a hard shot from Rios without doing a header on the canvas. Arum has put Rios in a good situation where his career will get a huge boost if he knocks Pacquiao out cold.
Rios is one of Arum’s Top Rank fighters, so if he wins, Arum wins. It’ll obviously hurt seeing Pacquiao getting knocked out again, but if it’s to one of his own guys, then it probably doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it would if a fighter outside of his stable were to stop Pacquiao.
Arum can out together an immediate rematch between Pacquiao and Rios, and I think a lot of boxing will want to see the fight, if only to see if Pacquiao will get knocked out for a third straight time. I can see a second Pacquiao-Rios fight bringing in well over 1 million PPV buys despite Pacquiao having lost his last three fights. I see his PPV numbers staying up there for a while until the losses because too hard to ignore by fans.
Rios has a good chance of putting Pacquiao out of his misery and finishing him off in this fight if he knocks him out like Marquez did. Pacquiao might choose to walk away after the knockout and retire. I don’t think he will, but there’s a definite possibility.
His trainer Freddie Roach is already talking about this being a make or break fight for Pacquiao and that he will tell him to retire if he struggles. We could see Pacquiao call it a day if Rios takes him out. It’ll be sad for Pacquiao’s fans, but this how a lot of fighters end their careers, so it’s not like it’s unexpected. I never thought for a second that Pacquiao would retire while he’s still on the top.
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