Boxing Blueprint: How to Beat Manny Pacquiao
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By Daniel “Tex” Cohen
Boxing offers everyone the chance to be a strategist. By predicting how a fight will unfold and what a challenger needs to accomplish to pull off the victory, we can all make suggestions and see if we are right or wrong when reality takes place. Those that are right more than they are wrong deserve all the credit and the glory.
Presented here is RSR’s Boxing blueprint.
This week, we take on Manny Pacquiao.
Strength:
BALANCE- Manny Pacquiao is now one of the top five most balanced fighters in the world. His understanding of the balance between defense and offense, straight and crooked punches, activity and rest, and trading and blocking have transformed from a second tier windmill into a dominant whipsaw.
Counter:
FLEXIBILITY- The first problem with beating Manny Pacquiao is that you can’t take the standard blueprint into a Pacquiao fight. You must take a Napoleonic approach and plan for all mitigating factors. Assume maximum flexibility.
Strength:
HAND SPEED- Pacquiao has some of the fastest, most fluid, most powerful hands in the fight game. He has knocked guys out with one punch, but the accumulation of punches he can lay on any other fighter is more impressive than what any other fighter can do (CompuBox stats be damned).
Counter:
IRRITATION-I would recommend “avoidance”, but Pacquiao uses the momentum of retreat against his opponents (see Miguel Cotto). Instead, you have to break his rhythm. Cotto did better when he rushed Pacquiao. The best way to disrupt his flow is by countering. Juan Manuel Marquez wrote the book on how to counter-punch Pacquiao.
Strength:
RELENTLESSNESS-The man never stops coming at you. His arms have sliced through skin and nearly buzzed bone. His style is fearsome. His form is seemingly flawless.
Counter:
BRUTALITY- At this stage of the game, a man needs to learn how to hurt Pacquiao if he wishes to beat him. It doesn’t matter whether you hit him to the chin or body, but you have to wobble him, bounce him off the ropes with a big shot, take the air out of him, pop him with a jarring overhand right… something to let him know you mean business and can really smack. Pacquiao’s opponents have not had his respect late into the fight.
Strength:
AGGRESION- Pacquiao is going to come forward and never let you put a hand on him. If you find yourself grasping at straws, he will use your misses against you by hitting back three or four times. Every miss is an exponentially awful, nightmarish amount of damage to take for any given fighter.
Counter:
MUSCLE- I always wonder why no one tries to grapple with Pacquiao. You have to take a few shots to get into a clinch, but maybe you can wear him down late in the fight by grabbing at him. As a fan, I would rather see guys fight. In fact, I personally think using the clinch as a strategy is more or less illegal and that referees should better regulate and enforce fights.
But as a strategist, I wonder why no one has ever tried to wrestle a victory away from Pacquiao. Risk the points; it gives you a better shot at the win, and you can always quit clutching after the warning and come on strong late in the fight.
Strength:
STRATEGY- Freddie Roach has figured out fight plans that have worked out well in the past. I don’t know if Roach suggested that Pacquiao use a rope a dope against Cotto, but either Roach or Pacquiao unleashed that approach and it was a work of art.
Pacquiao can now adjust on the fly.
Counter:
STRATEGY- Fire with fire. Strike Pacquiao with as many varieties of plans as you can in the early going. Be as deceptive as possible. Map out each round with nine or ten possible routes. If you‘re a fighter that gets confused by that kind of approach, you aren’t leaving the ring with a victory.
Strength:
INCUMBENCY- Some guys are used to being the champ. That sort of stature led to the downfall of Lennox Lewis in his first bout with Hasim Rahman. Lewis’ temporary hubris was his only true lapse in a long, illustrious career.
Pacquiao handles his ownership of position much better than Lewis does. Once he hit the top, he never stopped training, performing and fighting, for even a moment. We’ll see if that continues as he pursue public office.
Counter:
PSYCHOLOGY- The underdog is always more motivated. If you are an equal (such as Floyd Mayweather, JR., or Shane Mosley) then you can clearly mess with his head a little bit. Pacquiao HATED what Mayweather did to him in the press and basically backed out of the fight because he felt Mayweather was acting libelously.