PACMAN... manny defeat a prime barrera when he freddie roach is just starting to scratch the surface of pacman's immense talent. again, a prime barrera was stopped by a pre-prime pacquiao
Its a toss-up IMO, the primes fight would more resemble the closeness of the 2nd fight as opposed to the mauling of the 1st fight even tho that 1st fight took place in MABs prime yrs. If the Barrera that fought Naz knew all about Pac as he did in fight 2, its not out of the question that he could go a step further & outbox Pac to a decision but as we can only go on what we have seen & stylewise Pac is always gonna make MAB uncomfortable, I voted for Pacquiao but really, it is a pick em, would be fascinating to see for sure.
a one dimensional pac beat a prime barrera. a prime pacquiao will destroy barrera worse than the 1st encounter
A prime Pacquiao fought ancient Barrera in their rematch, and he couldn't stop him. Manny doesn't stop any version of Marco that fought Naz, Salud, Sanchez, or even Morales 1 and 2. I've got Barrera by UD12. I think on Marco's best night, he comes up with a way to win. He's a better boxer than Manny in my opinion, and like he showed in the second fight, he can fight effectively on the outside against the so-called improved Manny Pacquiao. He can pick his moments to effectively throw combinations, as he does best, and get the better of the action. if it comes down to a few points, Manny has been known to get the decisions, but I think best Barrera and best Manny is a hell of a fight, and Barrera wins based on his superior technical ability.
Why did the `one dimensional` Pac beat Barrera much much easier than the `complete` Pac beat the much older version of Barrera ? Could it be because Barrera got caught off gaurd by how good Pacquiao was.... something that wouldnt happen if both were at their primes & knew all about the quality of each other. Just a thought. Im no Barrera fan but you have to annylize fairly.
How about Barrera came in the 2nd fight with a survival mode in mind. This was discussed long ago right after that 2nd fight and majority thinks that Barrera came to the fight just to survive the 12 rounds.
In any event, considering the milage on Barrera, the new and improved Manny should have taken him out if their first fight was really the two at their very best. When people say prime for prime, that to me means both fighters were at the very best. I don't think that was the case for Marco in 2003 after going through the motions with old and smaller opponents in Tapia and Kelley.
If we talk about their very best, then you cannot match them because Barrera's prime is at the lower weights (122-126) while Pacquio's skill is still improving and he is already fighting at 140 now.
The mature Pacquiao we've been seeing as of late would be hell for most people. Gotta go with Pacquiao in this match-up, among other things for the fact that he does have two notches on his belt already with Barerra... which is a fact that cannot be discounted.