Pacquiao’s mission today: Win by knockout

By Al S. Mendoza

MANNY Pacquiao goes to his 60th fight today at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

That is historic, as historic as when Queen Elizabeth II observed her 60th year as queen of Great Britain on June 5.

After 17 years of fighting as a professional, Pacquiao, 33, battles before noontime Timothy Bradley, 28, of Los Angeles, California, USA.

Sixty fights are simply that many.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. had only fought 43 times and he keeps on bragging he is the world’s pound-for-pound king.  And he is 17 fights short of matching Pacquiao’s record.

Talk about sheer braggadocio.

He even keeps on saying he’s much better than Pacquiao.

Mayweather has fought both Oscar De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto but he could only score points victories over the two.

And take this:  Mayweather could barely defeat De La Hoya as Floyd’s victory wasn’t even a unanimous decision.

I had judged that fight at the ABS-CBN studios and my scorecard showed De La Hoya the winner.

The ringside judges had erred but then, that’s how the cookie crumbles, so to speak.

Pacquiao stopped De La Hoya in eight rounds and Cotto in 12 rounds.

Tell me, isn’t that proof enough that Pacquiao is more superior than Mayweather?

But let’s go back to today’s Pacquiao-Bradley fight.

If Bradley keeps his promise to bang it up with Pacquiao, he’d be knocked out sooner than expected.

But if Bradley would run – as I could sense that he might run – then Pacquiao will win on points for the fifth straight time.

Bradley has a reputation to keep:  Unbeaten in 28 fights, with 12 knockouts.

But if he’d realize early in the fight that his record would be broken, I guess he’d take defeat the graceful way:  Lose on points.

He knows pretty well that Pacquiao has a knockout punch, which had felled 38 of Pacquiao’s previous 54 victims.

In fact, Bradley, until today, has yet to meet as tough a foe as Pacquiao.  Once he gets a taste of Pacquiao’s punching power early on, I have this sneaky feeling he’d start ducking, dancing and running.

But can he duck, dance and run for 12 rounds?

That’s the 64-dollar question, so to speak.

For, Pacquiao, not known to many, is a man with a mission today.

He’s tired of being labeled as having lost his knockout power.

Four straight wins on points should be enough.  Time to go back to his knockout ways again.

Even Freddie Roach, his Hall of Fame American trainer, is fed up with Pacquiao’s points victories in the last four fights.

He has openly expressed his wish to see Pacquiao score his 16th straight win by a knockout and improve his record to 55-3-2, win-loss-draw, with 39 knockouts.

Woe to Bradley.  Seemingly, history would be unkind to him.

Poor Bradley will be lucky to be still on his feet after six rounds.

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