By Dan Ambrose: The conventional wisdom about this Saturday’s fight is that unless the 27-year-old Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) can get the respect of Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) early and often, he’s going to fall behind on points, take a beating and then get stopped in their Macao, China based fight.
Paulie Malignaggi also seems to believe that Rios’ best chance of beating Manny is to go after Pacquiao early and force him to fight in a furious toe-to-toe battle that will give Rios his best and possibly his only chance of winning. It’s kind of the only way Rios knows how to fight, but it’s also a risky strategy even for him because Pacquiao is usually very good early in his fights.
“Brandon I think will be well served to test Pacquiao early, try to make it a dog fight right away,” Rios told On the Ropes Boxing Radio. “Brandon can cut off the ring. If Brandon can cut off the ring the right way, force Manny into a sort of a dog fight, which Brandon absolutely loves to be in, it could be very interesting.”
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is expecting Rios to come out on fire in this fight, and he’s prepared Pacquiao for that to happen. We’ll likely see Pacquiao looking to make the same moves that he did in facing Ricky Hatton, a fighter with the same kind of fighting style as Rios. Hatton was susceptible to Pacquiao’s power and he ended up getting blown out in 2 rounds. It’s going to be interesting to see if Rios is susceptible to Pacquiao’s power in the same way. If Rios can take Pacquiao’s power, then this fight is going to be a lot more difficult for Pacquiao.
Roach will need to use a different strategy to get Pacquiao to avoid the shots from Rios because Pacquiao is too up in there in age for him to be taking hard punches from a younger fighter like Rios. Pacquiao has a lot more wear and tear and mileage on him at 34 than the 27-year-old Rios, so Roach is going to need to make sure that he doesn’t let him get hit too much in this fight. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum thinks he’s got a lot of time left in his career. That’s not going to happen if he’s forced to go to war with younger guys like Rios for 12 rounds. This is one of those potentially aging fights for Pacquiao if he gets hit too much.
Rios will need to cut off the ring well if he’s to have a chance to win the fight because Pacquiao will be using a lot of lateral movement in this fight to avoid getting hit.
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