By Chris Williams: Jeff Horn (17-0-1, 11 KOs) put on a magnificent performance on Saturday night in beating Manny Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. Horn did his job well in imposing his will, size and youth on the 38-year-old Pacquiao, who looked every bit of his age. This was a coming out party for the young Horn, who showed that he’s one of the best fighters in the welterweight division.
A lot of boxing fans were complaining afterwards that Pacquiao was given the bad end of the stick. I don’t agree. The fans need to re-watch the fight, because Horn was the aggressor and did the better job. If you look at the fight as whole, there were 10 close rounds that could have gone either way. Both fighters were cut during the fight. It wasn’t a big deal.
The judges scored the fight correcting in giving the 29-year-old Horn the win by the scored 117-111, 115-113 and 115-113. I agreed with the 117-111 score. Horn did enough to win 9 rounds in the fight. Pacquiao let a lot of the rounds slip away. Here are the rounds I scored for Horn: #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12.
Pacquiao fought well enough to win rounds 3, 8 and 9. Those were the best rounds for Pacquiao. He did have a chance to knock Horn out in the 9th round, but he blew his opportunity when he missed repeatedly with his left hand power shots. Pacquiao didn’t even try to finish Horn off I round 10.
That was a grave error on Pacquiao’s part When you have a fighter that is on the ropes and ready to be knocked out, you don’t back off and take it easy hoping the judges will score the fight in your favor. Pacquiao needed to realize that he was in Australia, and they weren’t going to give him the win unless he was outstanding. He wasn’t. Pacquiao needed a knockout for him to make up all the rounds that he’d given away to Horn.
Pacquiao looked kind of sad and pathetic after the fight when he blamed his defeat on him being sick. It reminded me a lot of how Pacquiao initially blamed his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. on having an injured shoulder. Pacquiao then later said that he didn’t lose the fight. He thought that he’d done enough to rate the win over Mayweather. The boxing fans felt differently.
”I don’t like to complain, but when I arrive in [Australia], I catch cold,” said Pacquiao after the fight.
Horn did a great job of using his aggressive style of fighting to pressure the small 5’6” Pacquiao, and batter him with hard shots.
In round 6, Horn hurt Manny with a crushing right hand to the head that caused Pacquiao’s legs to buckle ever so slightly. Pacquiao took a step back and looked like he’d lost his wits for a second. In that same round, Pacquiao suffered a cut in his forehead. What was troubling was how Pacquiao was so concerned with his cut that he asked the referee to allow him to have the cut checked out by the ringside doctor.
I don’t know about you, but when I saw that, my thoughts were that Pacquiao was looking to get out of the fight. That’s the kind of move that a fighter would make if they were hoping the referee or ringside doctor would save him.
As for Horn being hurt in round 9, he wasn’t really hurt. He said he was a little hurt, but not badly hurt.
“I was fine,” said Horn in talking about round 9. ”I wasn’t really that hurt.”
Horn was rejuvenated after the 9th round. The referee Mark Nelson let him know that he needed to show him something otherwise he was going to stop the contest. That’s all Horn needed to hear, because he came out looking like a different person in the 10h round. Pacquiao wasn’t ready for a fully recharged Horn in the 10th. You could see it. As soon as Horn nailed Pacquiao with the first big right hand at the start of the 10th, Pacquiao backed off completely and never even tried to resume his offensive surge that he showed in the previous round.
The final punch stats saw Horn land 92 of 625 shots for a connect percentage of 15. I don’t know how accurate those stats are. Even if those stats are correct, Horn made the shots count in landing the harder blows in 8 to 9 of the rounds. Pacquiao didn’t possess the same kind of power that Horn had on his punches.
Pacquiao landed 182 of 573 shots for a connect percentage of 31.8. As I mentioned already, Horn was the guy landing the harder punches. Pacquiao’s weaker punches weren’t enough for the judges to give him enough rounds for him to win the fight. You could hear the difference in power between the two fighters when they would land their punches. Horn’s shots made a lot of noise when he would connect with Pacquiao’s head and body. In contrast, Pacquiao
Pacquiao didn’t know how to fight Horn. The strange way that Horn would move had Pacquiao tied in knots mentally. It was like Pacquiao had landed on planet Neptune and he was meeting alien life for the first time. Pacquiao had no clue in how to deal with the movement of Horn. The way that Horn was constantly coming forward pressuring Pacquiao gave him a great deal of problems as well.
Horn was such a large fighter. When he would come forward, Pacquiao looked afraid, ad didn’t react the way that he needed to in order to get the win. Pacquiao was getting hit way too much for him to win. I don’t think Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach planned to fight someone as big as Horn, because they looked lost out there.
Pacquiao kept letting himself get trapped against the ropes by Horn. You would think that Pacquiao would know better not to let himself get trapped on the ropes, because that’s when Horn would do his best work I winning the rounds.
The 6th round was a really bad one for Pacquiao after he was staggered by a right hand from Horn. I don’t know what the boxing fans and media were thinking, but when you get hurt like that, the judges are going to give the round to your opponent nine times out of ten.
The boxing fans that saw the Horn vs. Pacquiao fight on free television on ESPN got a real treat tonight in seeing the Paquiao-Horn fight. Instead of having to watch the fight on HBO PPV, the fans got to see it on ESPN. The fight turned out to be a super exciting one that the fans will cherish for a long time to come.
Horn showed no respect for Pacquiao’s punching power with the way that he was pressuring him in the second half of the fight. Horn was counting on being able to take whatever shots that Pacquiao would and, and he turned out to be right. Horn was able to land with big shots just by pressuring Pacquiao.
The end result of the Pacquiao vs. Horn fight was good news for the boxing fans because they’ll get to see the two of them do it again. Horn said he’ll give Pacquiao a rematch. If Pacquiao is good enough, he’ll be able to avenge his loss. I don’t know if he is through.