LAS VEGAS – Manny Pacquiao proved that old boxing adage that speed kills by baffling, bewildering and ultimately battering Oscar De La Hoya to a punishing and humiliating eighth-round technical knockout Saturday night.
But it was more than Pacquiao’s blinding hand speed that upset the odds and gave the Filipino icon the biggest victory of his career – or the career of any other Asian fighter in history. Pacquiao dominated De La Hoya with speed, skill, technique and strategy.
Pacquiao’s longtime trainer, Freddie Roach, had a carefully laid-out plan for his star fighter to follow and the explosive southpaw executed it to a tee.
“The gameplan was perfect,†Roach said at the post-fight news conference. “That’s how we trained in the gym. That’s why we got four big, tall sparring partners for Manny to work on taking away their lefts.
“We knew that once we did that to De La Hoya, the fight was over.â€
Roach and Pacquiao worked on dozens of punch-slipping maneuvers and counter-punch moves all designed at nullifying De La Hoya’s jab.
By the end of the second round of Saturday’s fight, Pacquiao said he knew the plan was working, but in following his trainer’s strategy, he wisely held back from pressing the attack until the later rounds.
“Speed was the key,†Pacquiao said. “I was able to connect with my punches, but I was not confident (to attack yet) because maybe (De La Hoya was) looking for one shot.â€
Consensus going into Saturday’s bout was that De La Hoya, a 2-to-1 favorite by fight time, only needed one punch to end the fight.
However, the former six-division titlist never landed a clean power shot that affected Pacquiao, who circled to his right and made good use of side-to-side head movement just outside of De La Hoya’s reach and never gave him the opportunity to get off or gain any momentum.
Most fans and members of the boxing media believed that Pacquiao would simply try to overwhelm the older, slower fighter with his speed and activity, but that wasn’t Roach’s plan.
In every mitt workout and sparring session of their training camp, Pacquiao was instructed to gradually increase his punch output, round by round. Pacquiao wasn’t allowed to advance forward until after the sixth round, when Roach was confident that De La Hoya would be exhausted and discouraged from missing with his big punches while catching hard, accurate shots in return.
Only during the second half of Pacquiao’s 12-round mitt and sparring sessions would Roach command his fighter to go to the body with regularity and put together the three- and four-punch combinations that Pacquiao is known for.
By that point in the fight, Roach believed that even if De La Hoya were able to land the perfect punch, he would no longer have power to hurt Pacquiao, because his fighter would have beaten the strength out of him.
One doesn’t have to look at CompuBox stats, which revealed that Pacquiao landed 141 more punches than De La Hoya, to know that Roach was correct. A look at De La Hoya’s bruised, lumpy face and swollen left eye told that story better than a punch count.
“This victory was no surprise,†Roach said. “I knew from round one we had him. He had no legs, he was hesitant; he was shot. My guy was just too fresh for him.â€
Pacquiao was also too smart for De La Hoya.
In the first two rounds of the bout, Pacquiao’s accurate straight left was enough to soundly win the rounds. Pacquiao “touched†De La Hoya’s face with his left with regularity and seeming impunity, but he wisely refrained from over-committing to his money punch.
Pacquiao mixed in a few right hooks off of De La Hoya’s jab after blocking the Golden Boy’s best punch. He lured De La Hoya forward and into uppercuts, but he never got carried away with his offense. De La Hoya, who tried to time Pacquiao with right hands in the third round, was still dangerous.
However, by the end of the fourth, De La Hoya’s face was reddened and riddled with anxiety from his inability to land a punch while being lured into double lead lefts.
“I was connecting with everything, he was connecting with nothing,†Pacquiao said of these rounds.
Pacquiao was not only the busier fighter, but the more accurate and effective puncher. De La Hoya remained game, stalking Pacquiao behind a high guard, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t let his hands go. He was absolutely at the mercy of his ultra-fast tormentor and Pacquiao was only getting started with phase two of Roach’s plan.
In the fourth and fifth rounds, Pacquiao wasn’t just landing punches, he was hurting De La Hoya with head-snapping two-punch combinations. However, he still did most of his damage from the outside and only charged De La Hoya in spots.
A right-to-the-body-hook-to-the-head combination from De La Hoya gave the fighter and his fans a glimmer of hope in the fifth round, but he was hunched over by retaliatory body shots from Pacquiao before the end of the round. These punches would be the first of many torso-crunching body shots from Pacquiao in the final rounds of the bout.
Roach believed attacking De La Hoya’s mid-section was the best chance of his fighter stopping the veteran boxer who has always exhibited a solid chin and underrated toughness. After the sixth round, it was time to put that theory into play.
Pacquiao switched gears and applied pressure in the seventh round, perhaps the most one-sided round De La Hoya has suffered in his 16-year career. De La Hoya was forced back into his own corner where the Filipino icon tortured him with well-placed body punches and power shots from all angles. Although De La Hoya was not knocked down, the seventh round was scored 10-8 for Pacquiao by all three official judges.
The eighth round was more of the same.
De La Hoya’s head trainer, Nacho Beristain, probably made a mistake in having the 35-year-old fighter train for weeks at the welterweight limit instead of gradually coming down to 147 pounds, but the respected Mexican coach made the right call by stopping the fight before the start of the ninth round.
In the final three rounds of the bout, a drained-looking De La Hoya, who weighed in at 145 pounds, his lowest weight in 11 years, had become what Roach had called him during the pre-fight buildup – a spent bullet.
Pacquiao, who landed 59-percent of the 333 power punches he threw, had a 91 to 21 edge in connects over the last three rounds of the bout, according to CompuBox.
“No hard feelings,†De La Hoya told Roach immediately after the fight. “I’m OK. I just don’t have it anymore.â€
De La Hoya, who skipped the post-fight press conference to go directly to the hospital for precautionary measures, said he wasn’t surprised at the bout’s outcome.
“I’m not shocked because at this stage (of a fighter’s career) when you face someone like Pacquiao, you know it’s going to be a hard fight,†he said before leaving the ring. “My style is to go forward and he was boxing on his toes.â€
His underrated boxing skill was as much of a factor in Pacquiao’s victory as much as his speed was. The degree of patience and poise Pacquiao exhibited surprised most ringside observers, but not Roach or the fighter.
“The only thing that surprised me was that my trainer predicted the round (I stopped De La Hoya),†he said.
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=16597.0
