Bet the house on Pacquiao

This article will appear in ESPN the Magazine. ESPN sent this guy out to do a piece on Clottey and he wrote about what he observed.

 

I think most objective fans saw this coming. Clottey is a good fighter with a solid skillset. However, he's an ordinary fighter and he's tailor made for a guy as skilled and dynamic as Pacquiao. When you combine this with him being ill prepared coming into this fight, you can see why almost no one gave him a chance. Roach gave Pacquiao a relatively simple gameplan. Pacquiao executed it almost perfectly and the result was a shutout.

Clottey has 3 legit losses now and all 3 are to Top Rank fighters. There is a good reason Top Rank handpicked this guy. In all 3 fights, Clottey had some success when he let his hands go and at some point decided not to fight. Clottey has no movement, he comes foward in straight lines and his offense is predictable. I expected him to have a low output, and I expected Pac to tee off on him while he was in his shell and then get out of there before Clottey could get off his own punches.

As far as Pacquiao, another good performance by him. He wasn't landing much, but he stayed active and didn't stand in front of Clottey too much. He seemed unable to defend against the uppercut and the straight right. However, he took the punches well and excelled in pretty much every other area.