The year 2010 was always going to be about one fight, and this isn’t it. However Saturday’s welterweight match-up between Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey is apparently the next best thing and fingers crossed, will act as a precursor to the Pacman and Floyd Mayweather super-fight that the world and his wife want to see.
However Pacquiao can’t take his eyes of the job in hand because Clottey is not a fighter to underestimate. His style is defensive and the idea is to counteract Pacquiao’s lightning hand-speed with solid blocking and a strong jaw, but the Ghanaian has a toilsome job on his hands. At the moment it is hard to see a better boxer in the world than Pacquiao and he looks fairly unstoppable.
What you get with Clottey is a sturdy unit and a good defensive boxer who will throw combinations when the opportunity arises. He’s got a powerful jab and has shown against Zab Judah that he can take on and beat high calibre opponents. In his last fight he lost against Miguel Cotto, obviously there is no shame in that, and Clottey put up a good fight, but was found wanting against Cotto’s raw-power. However Clottey showed heart and ability throughout, he caused Cotto all manner of problems and was unlucky to lose by split decision. Despite being dropped in the first, everyone watching felt it could have gone either way and Clottey can count himself unlucky on the cards. Still the Ghanaian showed he takes a punch well and has yet to be stopped inside the distance.
As for Pacquiao, everyone knows what you get from him these days. Devastating pace and power as the punches literally explode from fists which are attached to two pneumatic drills. The way he tore apart Cotto in his previous bout was devastating and he showed that he can keep up his pace for a number of rounds and not just obliterate opponents early on like he did to Ricky Hatton.
The most interesting dynamic of this bout will be Pacquiao’s pace against Clottey’s defensive abilities. Freddie Roach has been making some shrewd picks for his fighters lately but you can’t take anything away from the calibre of opposition that Pacquiao has beaten because in the last four or five years he has only fought top pugilists. Where Hatton and Cotto engaged him, Clottey will back off, take punches and look to counter-strike. It is similar to what Mayweather would do, but obviously Clottey is not quite at that level and you wonder if this is something of a “warm up” for Mayweather.
If Pacquiao goes in to this fight having underestimated Clottey we could see one of the biggest shocks in boxing for quite some time, but it’s just hard to imagine it happening. The Pilipino has been devastating these last few years and it would take a massive lapse of concentration to cost him this one. Defeat would be astronomical as well; both he and Mayweather need to come through their next fights unscathed so they can once again look towards building that dream fight that quite frankly everyone must be getting sick of hearing about.
On the night expect Pacquiao to be too quick, a late knockout in his favour seems the most likely outcome, but Clottey will be no push-over. The Ghanaian would have trained hard for this, he knows he’s the underdog and will be hoping that Pacquiao’s camp have underestimated him. However he will also know all too well that it will take something really special to stop Pacman.
Tags: