By Chris Williams: Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) said he thinks Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) is starting to show his age with his recent defeats to Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley. Rios still thinks Pacquiao is a good fighter, but he believes that either age or the side effects from being in too many wars has started to wear him down.
Pacquiao and Rios have a fight on November 23rd in Macao, China, and Rios says he plans on beating Pacquiao.
Rios said to ESPN “Manny Pacquiao was the best, but everybody gets to the aging point…he’s been in a lot of wars and everything. He’s been in a lot of fights…I’m younger, I’m coming up in weight; I want the fame. My goal is to stop any other plans [that Pacquiao has for future fights].”
Well, Pacquiao is turning 35 in 4 months, and that’s a pretty ripe age for almost any boxer unless your name is Bernard Hopkins or Wladimir Klitschko. 35 is old for a smaller fighter like Pacquiao, who has taken a lot of hard head shots during his long 18-year pro career. In the past four years, Pacquiao has had some grueling fights against Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Pacquiao won almost all of those fights, but he took head shots from these guys, and they’re physically bigger fighters than the guys that Pacquiao fought from 1995 to 2007. Getting hit a lot from big guys like Clottey, Cotto and Margarito had to have been tough for Pacquiao regardless of the fact that he beat them all.
Pacquiao says he was knocked out by a lucky punch by Marquez last December, but the fact is he was dropped earlier in the fight as well. They all can’t be lucky punches if he’s getting knocked down more than once. If bad luck keeps happening over and over again in the same fight, then that’s a sign of a problem.
I agree with Rios. I think Pacquiao starting to show his age, because he wouldn’t have been dropped twice by Marquez if this fight had taken place 2 or 3 years ago. All of sudden Pacquiao is getting dropped, and it just happens to be coming after two other poor performances against Tim Bradley last year, and Marquez in 2011.
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