Shawn Porter: I’m confident I’ll beat Manny Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 08/18/2020 - Comments

By Allan Fox:  Shawn Porter is looking past his scheduled opponent Sebastian Formella for this Saturday night on August  22 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California. The contest will be televised on FOX PBC Fight Night & FOX Deportes. Porter wants to fight Manny Pacquiao, who still doesn’t have an opponent right now for his next match in 2020.

Fans haven’t paid much attention to the Porter-Formella fight for obvious reasons, and a lot of don’t know this contest is even happening.

Formella is an unknown guy from Germany, who has been fighting obscure opposition through his entire six-year career.  With the level of guys that Formella has fought since turning pro in 2014, it’s a miracle that he’s ranked in the top 15 at all.

Shawn not concentrating on Formella

Porter being matched up against Formella is a sign that his handlers believe he needs a confidence booster after his grueling 12 round decision loss to Errol Spence Jr.

What’s interesting is Porter isn’t talking up his fight with #9 IBF Formella. Rather than focusing on his Formella, Porter is saying he wants to fight superstar Manny Pacquiao.

Unfortunately, Porter (30-3-1, 17 KOs) isn’t in a strong position to dictate a fight between him and WBA welterweight champion Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs).

Porter, 32, he’s not someone that Pacquiao would want to fight right now given his recent loss to Errol Spence Jr last September. Nevertheless, Porter feels that a match between him and the 41-year-old Pacquiao would be all-action, can’t miss affair for boxing fans to watch.

Porter says he’s confident that he would beat Pacquiao if allowed to fight him. The winner of the Porter-Formella fight will be the mandatory challenger for IBF/WBC 147-lb champion Errol’ The Truth’ Spence Jr (26-0, 21 KOs).

Years ago, Porter and Pacquiao sparred, and Shawn feels that he learned enough from the sessions to believe that he would be victorious against him.

Image: Shawn Porter: I'm confident I'll beat Manny Pacquiao

Shawn vs. Pacquiao would be exciting

“There’s a lot of history between Manny Pacquiao and me,” said Porter to Fighthype. “Even if you take away the history and look at us as fighters. Don’t look at us in terms of our records or rankings.

Just look at us in terms of us as fighters, in the welterweight division, there are no two more exciting fighters between Manny Pacquiao and Shawn Porter. There’s no one more exciting than myself and Manny Pacquiao.

“The fact of the matter is, you know what’s going to happen when Shawn Porter gets inside the ring, and you know what’s going to happen when Manny Pacquiao gets inside the ring.

“We never disappoint. Even in a loss, we never disappoint. Manny Pacquiao got knocked out crazy by [Juan Manuel] Marquez. Leading up to that knockout, there was no disappointment at all,” said Porter.

Pacquiao vs. Porter would be exciting, but it would also require an excellent referee to keep Shawn’s fouling in check. It would be off-putting for boxing fans to watch Porter head-butt, elbow and shove Pacquiao around the ring without being penalized.

The MMA style of fighting that Porter uses to win his boxing matches would be intricate for Pacquiao if a referee let him get away with those tactics.
In Porter’s last two fights, he’s struggled against Errol Spence and Yordenis Ugas.

Porter’s standard roughhouse style failed to work for him in those contests, and he didn’t have a Plan-B to fall back on when those fighters proved to be more talented.

Surprisingly, Porter was given a controversial 12 round split decision win over Ugas in a fight that boxing fans thought he lost. In Porter’s fight against Spence, he was beaten at his own game on the inside by the younger and stronger 2012 Olympian.

Porter: It’s up to Pacquiao to make the fight

“Even leading up to the knockout, it was like ‘Wow, Manny Pacquiao got knocked out.’ He wasn’t even disappointed,” continued Porter about Manny’s sixth-round knockout loss to Marquez in 2012. “That just happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qACg-6vK0u8

“And even with myself, with the few losses that I had and the great fights that I’ve had, there have never been any disappointments.

“So it makes sense for that fight to happen, and it’s up to Manny and his team to make the fight. We all tried to make a fight [with Pacquiao].

“Don’t forget our sparring experience,” said Porter in talking about his sparring he had many years ago with Pacquiao. “I’m confident I would beat him in a fight. It’s not just based on the sparring, but I do feel like I learned a lot from the sparring.

“When I saw the Marquez fight, I knew what Marquez saw. The same thing that you’d get in sparring is the same thing that you’d get in a fight. In sparring, you get time and time again to make adjustments and look at the film,” said Porter.

Juan Manuel Marquez is a lousy example for Porter to base an argument that he would beat Pacquiao. Marquez lost to Pacquiao a couple of times, and it wasn’t until their fourth fight that he finally knocked him out with a lucky punch in the sixth round.

 

Porter’s reputation of using rough-house tactics to help him win fights will make it very, very difficult for him ever to get a fight against Pacquiao at this point.

Pacquiao let off on Thurman

“Manny did the same thing in the Jeff Horn fight as he did in the Keith Thurman fight,” said Shawn. “He [Pacquiao] took his foot off the gas pedal. I think if he kept his foot on the gas pedal, he would have depleted Keith Thurman mentally and physically and possibly knocked him out.

“He took his foot off the gas pedal and allowed Keith to start to hit him, and allowed Keith to get some confidence. He allowed Keith to feel like he could win the fight, and I think he kept Keith Thurman in that fight.

“Manny does what he wants to do, and I think he gets comfortable and likes to feel guys hit him. I think in some capacity, it wakes them up, and I think that’s what happened in his fight with Keith Thurman,” Porter said.

The fact that Porter is entertaining the idea of him and Pacquiao meeting up in the future suggests that he doesn’t understand his style being all wrong for him. If Pacquiao were younger and the size as Porter, he would likely be willing to give him a fight, but he’s not.

“I was able to do that in sparring and get better. Marquez fighting [Pacquiao] four times, he had so much to look at, and so many experiences. That was bound to happen,” said Porter on Marquez, stopping Pacquiao in their fourth contest.

Porter’s fighting style is too similar to that of Jeff Horn for him to be considered as a viable option for Pacquiao. The Filipino star was roughed up by the Australian Horn in losing to him by a controversial 12 round decision in 2017 in Brisbane, Australia.

Image: Shawn Porter: I'm confident I'll beat Manny Pacquiao

It would be better if Porter doesn’t count on Pacquiao fighting him because it’s too unrealistic at this point. Pacquiao wants to fight popular guys, who aren’t going to rough him up for 12 rounds the way Porter likely would.

The guys that Porter needs to focus on fighting are Keith Thurman, Yordenis Ugas, Terence Crawford, and Spence. There’s still a massive amount of controversy surrounding Porter’s win over Ugas in March of 2019, and it’s troubling that Shawn isn’t interested in clearing that up. Porter talks about feeling he deserved the win over Spence, and yet he doesn’t mention his questionable victory over Ugas.