IT was a devastating shot. Juan Manuel Marquez knocked Manny Pacquiao cold. As Manny tumbled headlong towards the canvas in the sixth round of their 2012 clash, it looked as though Pacquiao’s glittering career was coming to a crashing halt.
But with a comeback win over Brandon Rios and then avenging a prior controversial loss to Tim Bradley this April, Pacquiao has returned to the top of the sport. He’s back at a level now where he can turn defence against the unheralded Chris Algieri into a major event in Macau.
Back then Pacquiao’s coach, Freddie Roach thought Manny was just about to take out Marquez. Ahead of the Algieri fight, Freddie recalled, “I love it when guys try to finish guys, I’m an aggressive trainer. He just walked into a shot, one second too soon and he got knocked out. The thing about that though is that Manny Pacquiao is a realist. He knows that getting knocked out is part of the sport, that’s why it doesn’t really affect him that. He doesn’t really care that he got knocked out. He would rather have won the fight, yes, but the thing is the knockout didn’t devastate him, didn’t change his style or his heart.
“He got knocked out twice before that, early in his career and when I first took him over he wanted to show me those tapes. I said, ‘Why are you showing me these tapes?’ He said, ‘Well I want you to see my whole career, I want you to know the good and the bad.’ There’s always good and bad in boxing. Anyone can get knocked out. He understands that. That’s why it doesn’t really bother him. The first time I got knocked out it changed my whole life. He deals with it a lot better than most people.”
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