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Manny Pacquiao Vs Brandon Rios: Where Have You Gone Manny Pacquiao? – Boxing News

By Gina L. Caliboso

My Dearest Congressman Pacquiao –

It has come to my attention that you recently may have lost favor as the people’s champion. But, to get to the core of this letter, from one boxing writer and fan, where have you been Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, or more importantly, where are you going?

I shouldn’t jest in that in this year 2013, you have been awfully quiet. Since I’ve been following your career moves through the weight classes, I loved being able to see you fight at least twice a year. And, it’s not as if the fights were 12 round unanimous decisions in bouts that comprised of two technical counterpunchers. It’s not as if you fought against handpicked opponents that you knew you could beat in what would be a boring fight.

In retrospect, I fully enjoyed your bouts against the Mexican fighters. In your battles against Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales, you never hesitated to fight your fight. You stood your ground and fought inside, created angles from the outside, and took on bloody punishment. It was a depth of pure single-mindedness and fearlessness that you absolutely belonged in the boxing ring. And, everybody started to pay attention to you as the unpolished Filipino fighter.

Opponents Barrera and Morales became your perfect foils in the sport of the lighter weight divisions of boxing. You shed quite a lot of blood in these fights. But what I truly appreciated and loved, I saw the hunger, the fight, and the extreme desire to become the world’s best pound for pound fighter. You fought from bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, then eventually to welterweight.

But then, as you got better, more people wanted to fight you. I won’t go into who WOULD NOT FIGHT you at this point in my letter, but since we’re on the topic of Mexican fighters, I’ll remind you of two opponents in particular: Juan Manuel Marquez and Oscar De La Hoya. However, to be safe, I’ll mention De La Hoya as a Mexican-American fighter who grew up in East Los Angeles. Internet headlines can completely misconstrue my article and turn it into something racial.

When you fought against De La Hoya, the boxing world and its fans knew, if not already, you were a champion. You fought and out-boxed De La Hoya into an 8th round retirement. Against Juan Manuel Marquez, you met your match. With all the guts and abandon in your epic four fights against one another, each fight revealed how the both of you were maturing and getting better as boxers. Marquez was able to counter against you, move with you, become static cling to every punch you threw. He even took a few punches to the jaw. The end result? In your four bouts, you beat him twice, fought to a draw, until the fourth meeting. He knocked you out in the sixth round. It was time, or perhaps Marquez’s number against you was about to be cashed in, or maybe, as all boxers might face, you were on the unfortunate receiving end of a great KO punch. It’s supposed to happen eventually. There is always that one fighter that brings out your best.

Of course, there were all the notable fighters you beat – Ricky Hatton, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley, and Miguel Cotto. You were fighting boxers bigger than you and you WON. You knocked out Hatton, defeated Margarito and Mosley with 12 round unanimous decisions, and fought Cotto to a 12 round TKO. But then, the bouts took a turn.

In Rocky III, the trainer Mickey said it best when Rocky asked him about how he arranged fights for him to win and keep his championship titles. Mickey says, “Now, three years ago, you was supernatural. You was hard and you was nasty and you had this cast-iron jaw, but then the worst thing happened to you, that could happen to any fighter. You got civilized.”

I’m not saying that becoming a Congressman, actor, singer, and being the people’s champion are bad things. But as your boxing career has played itself out in the last couple of bouts, there is a lot to be revealed more in the fighter’s losses and victories. You have lost your last two bouts. Against Timothy “Desert Storm” Bradley, you fought for 12 rounds to a split decision loss. Despite the loss, it brought about the question of judges’ scoring. And, as I mentioned before, you lost to Marquez in the 6th round with a KO. As a concerned fan and boxing writer, what is to be learned from you last two losses? First and most importantly, find the hunger, the drive, and the desire to be the best boxer for the course of 12 rounds.

Secondly, draw from the experience and feelings of all the wins and how hard it was for you to work yourself up from the poverty to the Philippines to be the premiere boxer that graced the front page of Time Magazine. It is in you and your fighting spirit to win. As Apollo said to Rocky when he convinces him to train Rocky in his rematch against Clubber Lang, “Now, when we fought, you had that eye of the tiger, man; the edge! And now you gotta get it back, and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning.”

As your fight against Brandon Rios, 31-1, 23 KO’s for the WBO International Welterweight title comes up in November, remember all this and move forward. Maybe watch the Rocky series. But as you know, Rios is going to be a competitive fighter. He’s younger, hungrier, and has a warrior spirit. The question is: What are you going to do about it?

Yours truly,

A Concerned Fan and Boxing Writer

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