Pacquiao-Rios

By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum plans on selling the November 23rd fight between Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) and Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) for $5 to Chinese boxing fans in pay per view, according to Tempo.com.ph.

The fight will be taking place at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, in Macao, Macao S.A.R., China. The $5 may not seem like a lot of money to U.S boxing fans, who pay from $60 to $70 to see Pacquiao’s fights on PPV, but with China’s huge 1.34 billion population, Arum, Pacquiao and Rios could rake in the cash from the Chinese PPV money alone.

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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.

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By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao appears to have been on a downward career spiral since his third fight with Juan Manuel Marquez in November of 2011 in a fight that pretty much the entire world saw Pacquiao losing, but yet he was still give a victory by the judges.

Since that fight, Pacquiao has lost his last two fights to Tim Bradley and Marquez, and things are starting to look desperate for the Filipino.

His promoter Bob Arum resisted the notion that Pacquiao needed a tune-up fight to make sure that he’s still able to take a heavy shot following his brutal 6th round knockout loss to Marquez last December.

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By Chris Williams: On paper the November 23rd fight between Manny Pacquiao and Brandon Rios in Macau, China isn’t particularly interesting one. Rios just got beat and got a questionable win over Richard Abril last year in February.

In effect, Rios has lost two out of his last three fights if you count his win over Abril as really being a loss as many boxing fans do. And Pacquiao has lost his last two fights and is coming off of a 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last December.

Under normal circumstances a fight like Pacquiao-Rios would be lucky if it drew 600,000 buys because Rios doesn’t have a large fan base as of yet, and there’s questions about whether he ever will. However, the fight can still draw huge numbers from curious boxing fans wanting to see Pacquiao get knocked out by Rios.

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By Chris Williams: Top Rank plans on having a 5-city promotional tour to hype Manny Pacquiao’s November 23rd fight against Brandon Rios in Macau, China. According to Steve Kim, the 5-city tour will include cities in China as well New York City and Los Angeles.

It’s unclear whether this will be enough to attract a lot of interest from Chinese and USA boxing fans in this fight because America fans tend to get more excited about fights that take place in the U.S, and this one will be in China.

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By Chris Williams: Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) figures that the only reason he was given a big money fight against Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) on November 24th this year is because Rios is coming off of a loss to Mike Alvarado in a fight that he didn’t look good in last March.

Rios said to the bostonherald.com “He [Pacquiao] picked me because I lost. They probably think ‘Brandon is easy to hit. Brandon gets hit all the time.’ It’s a very different story when you get in the ring with me…they made a mistake picking me.”

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By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach sees Manny Pacquiao’s fight against former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) on November 24th as being potentially Pacquiao’s last fight of his career if he fails to perform well in their HBO pay per view fight at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.

Pacquiao is coming off of not just one but two disappointing losses back to back, and he looks like a poor copy of the fighter that he once was years ago. The age and ring-wear is starting to shock it’s ugly effects on the 34-year-old Filipino now and Roach can’t just explain it away as Pacquiao not being motivated. The way he’s looked goes beyond motivation and more towards aging and too many hard fights.

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By Chris Williams: Former 8-division world champion Manny Pacquiao reportedly wants random drug testing for his November 24th fight against Brandon Rios in Macau, China. We don’t know which drug testing organization will be administering the tests, but one of them will.

This is interesting that Pacquiao wants the drug testing now because in the past his negotiations with Floyd Mayweather Jr. tanked in 2010 over drug testing. Mayweather wanted the full testing but Pacquiao wanted a period where there was no testing before the fight. The negotiations ending up going down the tubes from there and the fight wasn’t made.

Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz said to RingTV “The fact is that Manny has requested random drug testing for this fight. We still haven’t decided which entity we’ll use. It’s going to be either USADA or [VADA].”

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By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is incredibly excited about the November 24th fight between the recently beaten Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) and Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.

Both fighters are coming off of losses and in Pacquiao’s case, he’s coming off of two straight losses. The fight will still be on HBO pay per view regardless and the fight is being staged in Macau so that Pacquiao doesn’t have to pay the U.S tax rate on the loot he gets from American fans.

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