Manny Pacquiao answered a lot of questions against Brandon Rios tonight in Macau, China. Did the crushing KO loss to Juan Manuel Marquez somehow break him? Was he too old, and thus slow, to dominate Rios in the way that he had others of his style throughout his career?
Manny Pacquiao bloodies an overmatched Brandon Rios to take wide decision win
Manny Pacquiao put a beating on Brandon Rios in the main event of their HBO pay-per-view card.
Nicky Loh
Manny beat up Rios for all twelve rounds of the fight. He didn’t outbox him, he beat him up. The huge power shots were thudding to Rios’ face and body for damn near every minute of the bout.
Is Pacquiao broken?
Boxing’s not so well kept dirty secret is that, financially, most fighters can never stop. While Rios kept coming forward, throwing his own power, he simply didn’t have it in his toolbox to deal with the kind of Pacquiao that showed up tonight. That Pacquiao was a sort of “vintage Manny” that used counter punching, heavy combinations and footwork to stay out of danger. That said, he’s not exactly as good as he was at his peak, not quite as fast and not quite possessing of the kind of killer instinct that made him a sensation several years ago.
Despite a very clear win for Pacquiao, both to the naked eye and on the official scorecards, Manny did say after the fight that he was hurt very badly by a shot from Rios. Manny couldn’t remember the exact round, but said he thought it was round five.
Rios, for his part, deserves credit for never going down and being able to tough it out until the final bell of the 12th round. In typical Rios fashion, he got a little chippy over nothing during the post-fight interview when he took offense to a Max Kellerman question and demanded Max answer if he thinks he is a punching bag.
Rios did go on to discuss the loss by saying, “I fought one of the greatest boxers in the world besides Mayweather. The speed just got to me. I had fast sparring partners, but I think he was faster than them.”
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