Manny Pacquiao wasn’t making a big production about his loss to Jeff Horn in the immediate aftermath of the fight last Saturday night, but he sure is crying crocodile tears now, complaining that he was setup and going on about the officiating for the fight. Pacquiao is starting to sound REALLY bitter about his loss.
Pacquiao wants the World Boxing Organization to investigate the officiating for the fight as well as the referee, which they’re not going to do. Pacquiao now has three options he can take, and they are as follows:
– Retire and walk away from the sport
– Fight Horn in a rematch
– Accept the defeat and fight someone else
I know what I would do if I were Pacquiao, but I’m not sure that he would do it. I would stop complaining about the loss to Horn. I would then smother Horn with compliments for beating me, and I would then insist on fighting him again. I would learn from my mistakes and make sure I didn’t repeat them in the rematch.
If Pacquiao retires or chooses to fight someone else, he’s going to look bitter like a poor loser. It’s best for Pacquiao not to look like that, because he’ll only be hurting himself if he doesn’t fight Horn again. Pacquiao needs to fight Horn a second time to show the boxing public that he’s a better fighter than the one that Horn beat last Saturday night at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia.
Just so the readers know, Horn beat Pacquiao by the scores 117-111, 115-113 and 115-113. This writer from Boxing News 24 agreed with the 117-111 score. In other words, Horn fought well enough to deserve a 9 rounds to 3 score. That’s just my opinion. I went through the fight backwards and forwards and re-watched it 5 times. Each time I saw it, I had Horn winning 9 rounds to 3. He did a fine job of beating Pacquiao.
“The referee wasn’t competent. I felt I was set up, said Pacquiao via on ABS-CBN.
Pacquiao doesn’t say WHO set him up. He’s keeping quiet about who he feels supposedly set him up. It sounds like a crazy idea. How can all these people conspire to make sure Horn was given a victory? I think Pacquiao needs to sit down and watch his fight again. Horn outsmarted him last Saturday by coming into the fight with a great game plan. Horn stuck to that game plan for the entire 12 rounds. The only time where Pacquiao made the right adjustments to what Horn was doing was in the 9th. That was the round in which Pacquiao threw a lot of lefts that hurt Horn and had him close to being stopped.
Pacquiao use his right hand in the round, which makes me wonder if his arm has recovered from the shoulder surgery from after his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2015. Pacquiao looked like a one-armed fighter out there for most of the fight. After the 9th, Pacquiao didn’t throw a lot of shots for the remainder of the fight. He looked tired.
Pacquiao’s lack of production made it easy to score the final three rounds of the fight. Horn was outworking him, and showing the judges that he wanted it more than the bloody and battered Pacquiao. I had Horn already head going into the 9th round. Once Pacquiao stopped fighting hard in rounds 10-12, it was easy for Horn to put his stamp on the victory by taking those final 3 rounds.
What happened to the agreeable Pacquiao that we saw moments after the fight last Saturday? Pacquiao was taking the high road after his loss, saying that he respected the opinion of the judges. Somehow, Pacqiuiao has been transformed into a complainer. Let’s look at the referee Mark Nelson the way that we should be looking at him. Nelson did a good job of not going overboard in penalizing and over-governing the fight.
Horn wasn’t fouling Pacquiao. He was putting him in occasional headlocks. That kind of stuff is rarely penalized. Other than the headlocks, the only thing Horn did was bump into Pacquiao with his head when he was trying to work in close. That’s normal for fighters to bump heads when they’re working on the inside. It’s one of the hazards of the game. When you fight someone that works on the inside, you’re going to get hit with the crown of their head every now and then. It didn’t look intentional to me what Horn was doing. Obviously it didn’t look intentional in the eyes of the referee Mark Nelson. He couldn’t warn or penalize Horn for him trying to work on the inside.
“The wrestling, getting hit behind the head a lot, it didn’t look good but the referee didn’t pay any attention to it,” said Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach.
Horn was hardly wrestling. He was fighting. There was no grappling involved with Horn. He would put Pacquiao in headlocks on occasion, but my guess there was probably more than 3 headlocks per round.
Pacquiao needs to understand that sometimes things don’t go your way. Judges see things differently than you do at times. Horn fought a great fight, and the judges acknowledged that by giving him the win. Pacquiao didn’t show the judges that he wanted the win badly enough in the last quarter of the fight. That’s what I saw. I thought Horn really dug deep and showing heart after the 9th. I didn’t see the heart from Pacquiao. I saw a tired fighter, who didn’t have another gear to shift into.