Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao vs. Daniel Óscar García

"...thumb it up"? What is this, some of your dirty hitchhiking beatnik slang?

 

Hot take: Ang Pambansang Kamao is Manny's greatest official nickname by far; waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than "Pacman" (latter career) or "The Destroyer" (earliest).

Much as his arch-rival should've never switched from Pretty Boy to Money.

(and his recent victim Lucas Matthysse oughtn't have abandoned "Cold Blooded" in favor of "La Maquina")

 

I've only seen its third sequel, "A Bruising".

 

come on...

cruising 4: a bruising ??

shit's fucking brilliant. you philistines.

 

Why this is going to be a dominant victory for (even a 75% shot to bits) Pacquiao:

1. García is, at this level especially, a one trick pony with the slow but well-timed left hook. Name a time Pacquiao has ever been stopped, dropped or hurt by a left hook. Go ahead, take a sec, mull it over. Mm-hmm. Nope. Hasn't been one.
   KTFO by Torrecampo = fellow southpaw, caught him with a straight left (cross) on the unprotected chin as the very green & inexperienced Pac was bowing inside.
   KTFO by Singsurat = body shot.
   KTFO in JMM IV = right hand from hell, studied for dozens of rounds before he was able to land it.
   KD by Serikzhan Yeshmagambetov = looping right hand.
   KD by Skinny Hussein = stiff left jab on the nose that (a still young and defensively arrogant/lazy) Pac didn't see coming.
   Hurt (mildly, but enough for Roach to comment on it and game plan for that shot in the rubber) by Tim Bradley in the rematch = overhand right.
   Hurt by Margarito in the sixth (from Pac's own mouth) = body shot.
   Hurt in Morales I = body shots.
   
   It simply isn't a shot that Pac has ever been especially vulnerable to, given his stance & style (and on the occasions people have touched him with a left hook, it hasn't yielded any notable results, so either he just happens to have ridden them all well or that right side of his jaw is pretty sturdy) and it ranks head and shoulders over every other weapon in García's arsenal.
2. García struggles badly with four qualities, particularly when combined: hand & foot speed, work rate, southpaws, and unrelenting pressure. To wit, he was:
   Out-thrown by Mauricio Herrera (against whom most feel García received a gift) by 20 shots.
   Out-thrown by Keith Thurman, in a loss, by over a hundred and thirty shots.
   Out-thrown by Shawn Porter, in a loss, by two hundred and seventy goddamn shots.
   
   García throws on average between 400 and 500 punches over 12 rounds, but when pushed has risen into the seven hundreds. Pacquiao at welterweight throws on average somewhere in the five or six hundreds, although in some bouts it has been as low as the four hundreds (during the run of Mayweather, Vargas, and Bradley III)
   
   He was completely stymied by Amir Khan's movement, jab and speed in the first two rounds, before the idiot's defense & chin both suffered critical failures and unraveled his chances. A faded Pacquiao is still, IMO, faster than even a prime Khan. Similarly, in the rounds wherein he didn't either drop or hurt Judah with a big shot, the quick southpaw managed to comfortably outbox him for long stretches. Zab landed 59% of his power shots versus DSG.
   
   Outside his official losses and Mauricio Herrera (plus maybe Lamont Peterson, another hotly disputed point victory), the men that have run DSG the closest (both losing close decisions) have been lefties: Judah & Guerrero. Neither is as great as Pacquiao, and they were both considerably past their primes themselves when they fought (and did fairly well against) García.
   
   Porter suffocated García with pressure, as did Havoc Peterson in the second half of their fight. García did manage to put both of them on the backfoot at times, but his track record proves that he cannot maintain this role-reversal consistently against determined, hard-chinned pressure fighters. He also has a lazy habit of coasting and lapsing into a dissociative auto-pilot state in fights after spending too long on evasive maneuvers when big strong and/or heavy-handed opponents put him on the defensive (Matthysse, Porter, Thurman, etc) - as Pacquiao is sure to do.
   
   Hmm, can't think of any welters that combine being a southpaw with hand & foot speed, unrelenting pressure, and high work rates... can you?
   
   
3. Pacquiao's kryptonite is counter-punchers with great timing (ie JMM, PBF) - which on paper favors García, but those were all time great counter-punchers with phenomenal, crack-shot accuracy. García is among the best in that role active today, but he falls well short of those legends' standard...and one need only glance at Compubox to see that he misses a fuck-ton. 30% against Thurman, 32.9% against Guerrero, 35% against Porter, 29% against Peterson, 30% against Herrera, 36% against Matthysse (who fought HALF THE GODDAMN FIGHT HALF-BLIND!) and 31% against Judah. Even against somebody as notoriously easy to find and stationary as Bam-Bam freaking Ríos, he landed only 31% over nine rounds! You need to be averaging better than low thirties in your biggest steps up in class if you want to land enough on Manny Pacquiao to get & keep his respect, let alone defeat him. Of course, Jeff Horn famously landed just 15%, but he also (critically, to his official victory and to perceptions fueling the scorecards of anyone that saw it close in either direction) physically overpowered and roughed up Pacquiao in ways that García - larger than Pac but much smaller than Horn - simply wouldn't be able to duplicate. Mayweather landed 34%, which for him is very low, but when you put in context that he threw a slew of "burner" jabs that weren't even meant to land, subtracting those and and focusing in on power shots, he landed a juicy 48%. Morales landed 37% of his punches (41% of his power shots) when he beat Pacquiao. JMM outlanded Pacquiao 330-305 in total punches and 252-214 in power punches in their two fights (the ones in which both were prime; his accuracy dipped in the next two encounters and was ironically down to a paltry 21% in the fight he won via KO).