Manny Pacquiao and Brandon Rios will meet for the final time today before the fists start flying in their big fight on Saturday night from Macau, China. The promotion had been pretty tame until the fighters arrived in China this week. On Wednesday, an ugly scrum broke out between members of both fighters camps, including head trainers Freddie Roach and Robert Garcia, over access to a gym.
Both of those men, and their fighters, will be on stage tonight for the final weigh-in, and it'll be interesting to see whether there will be some lingering fireworks from that scene during the fighter workouts.
Where: Venetian Resort. Macau, China.
When: Nov. 22, 2013. 6:30 p.m. ET
Pacquiao enters the fight badly in need of a victory to resurrect his career. He's suffered back-to-back losses, even though both fights were completely different.
The scorecards in his defeat against Timothy Bradley were widely panned by boxing fans and media as not accurately reflecting the action in the ring. Most felt that Pacquiao did more than enough to win the fight by a wide margin, and the official result caused a firestorm of criticism.
But then a single missile right hand from Juan Manuel Marquez silenced all talk of the Bradley affair and raised some serious questions about Pacquiao's ability to continue competing at a top-level. Those are questions he hopes to answer on Saturday night.
For Rios, the equation is much simpler. He's in a virtual no-lose situation. If he wins, he gets the biggest win of his career on the biggest stage of his career.
If he loses, but doesn't get blown out, everyone expected it and he can recover.
But first, the combatants need to make weight, and that's what they'll aim to do today.
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