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Bleacher Report - Boxing: Pacquiao vs. Rios 2013: Grading Each Fighter's Performance

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Pacquiao vs. Rios 2013: Grading Each Fighter's Performance
Nov 24th 2013, 07:24, by Joseph Zucker

Manny Pacquiao's career is back on track after a unanimous decision victory over Brandon Rios in Macau, China on Sunday morning.

A look a the judges' scorecards tells you all you need to know about how far ahead Pacquiao was from his opponent, via Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole.

ESPN Stats and Info has the round-by-round averages for each fighter.

With some debating as to how much Pac-Man has left in the ring, it was an assured performance that demonstrated he's not done as a fighter.

But what about Rios? How did he do?

Well, let's take a look at each guy's report card.

 

Manny Pacquiao

It wasn't a peerless performance from Pacquiao.

Any comparisons to Floyd Mayweather's fight with Robert Guerrero would be apt. While Mayweather looked good, you saw some flaws in his performance and wondered how he would fare against a better fighter.

Then "Money" went and beat Canelo Alvarez, cementing the fact that he's still a phenomenal boxer.

Pac-Man still needs that kind of fight to put the Juan Manuel Marquez knockout fully behind him.

Pacquiao controlled this fight from start to finish. He bludgeoned Rios with hard body shots and snapped his head back with killer jabs. In addition, he was well-drilled in terms of avoiding the best blows from "Bam Bam."

Once Pacquiao was past about the fourth round, this fight was his. Rios simply had no match for Pac-Man's offense.

What makes it so hard to accurately grade the winner's performance is that the fight was so one-sided and wasn't much of a challenge. Did Pacquiao demonstrate that he remains a world-class fighter?

Brian Kenny of Showtime Boxing had one of the better perspectives after the fight.

While this version of Manny Pacquiao is very gifted, the days of him knocking guys out for fun seems all but over. Some of his power is gone, and it will only continue to drain. Whether or not he'll be able to adapt his style as a result remains to be seen.

All in all, it was a good performance from Pacquiao. However, you can't help but think he didn't need his best stuff tonight, thus not making it the perfect performance.

Final Grade: A-

 

Brandon Rios

Rios deserves to at least be graded on a curve. He was the big underdog coming into the fight and lacks the overall talent of his opponent. You can't critique him as harshly as you would Pacquiao. This isn't a case where both guys were on level playing fields.

In the second or third rounds, Rios was doing a good job of clinching with Pacquiao and sneaking a couple of punches. This was about when Pac-Man was feeling himself out, so it represented the best time to get some quick offense in and try to swing the fight.

Unfortunately for Rios, he wasn't able to knock Pacquiao out, or at the very least, land a couple of big blows that would make Pac-Man groggy and off his game.

One of the bigger criticisms one might have for "Bam Bam" is something that promoter Lou DiBella brought up on Twitter.

Once the fight was firmly in Pacquiao's favor, Rios never tried to unleash a ton of late offense at his opponent. This wasn't like Guerrero's fight with Mayweather, when Guerrero simply couldn't hit "Money May."

Rios sat back and took blow after blow after blow, without much response.You'd have to think there's more sense in going out in a blaze of glory, throwing everything you've got. If you get knocked out, so what? You were gonna lose anyway.

If you're going to knock his performance, it's certainly in that area.

Final Grade: C

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