MANY of the all-time greats of boxing are remembered for their defensive prowess and ring generalship. Manny Pacquiao is already considered part of that pantheon but is far better known for his offensive genius than his defensive wiles. A good Pacquiao performance is a blur of rapid fire straight blows and constant side steps to change up the angle. When he fought Antonio Margarito and looked to be the better part of two weight classes smaller, Pacquiao threw over a thousand punches to land around five hundred and left Margarito’s face battered and spirit broken.
A sample of Pacquiao’s magic from his fight with Miguel Cotto. Flurry, turn, flurry, turn.
Boxing is a game where the old and crafty veteran can still pull off the upset against an athlete in the prime of his powers. The problem is that most of the ways an old boxing master can do that involve slowing the fight down. Holding, controlling distance and position in the ring, looking for hard counters. Pacquiao is now forty years old and while his prowess in the ring is still considerable, there is no pretending that he is the same many who melted Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto all those years ago.
Some of Pacquiao remains and it is still enough to fill stadiums, but it often looks like a tribute act. He plays many of the classic hits, but where before every combination was followed by another or a counter, Pacquiao works in slower, disconnected flurries nowadays. The inaccuracy of Pacquiao’s jab has been mulled over plenty in the boxing press but Pacquiao’s lead hand really only serves as an annoyance and then a connection on the third punch of his usual combos. The 1-2-1, or jab, left straight, up-jab is a constant feature of Pacquiao’s bouts with the emphasis being on landing the second punch and pushing the opponent’s head back or guard up with the third.
Manny Pacquiao or Keith Thurman? Fight week is officially upon us, and some of boxing biggest names make their pick! pic.twitter.com/CgCDNk833I
— FOX Sports: PBC (@PBConFOX) July 14, 2019
Don’t let that convince you that Pacquiao’s ageing is the whole story though. Keith Thurman is a complicated man in his own right and finds himself in a strange position coming into this bout. Thurman was the WBA welterweight champion and very well regarded before an elbow injury put him out of action from March of 2017 until January of this year. When Thurman came back he still looked slick but in his tune-up against the respectable but not world-beating Joselito Lopez, Thurman took some shots that were thought to be beneath a fighter of his skill. In the seventh round he was stunned by a left hook and spent the rest of the round running, holding, and getting his head snapped back with straight right hands. He fought back and took the majority decision—and it should be said that the scores might not have reflected his performance in the other rounds of that fight—but it certainly didn’t look quite as sharp as the Thurman who left.
A lot of Thurman’s best connections come on the counter and much of his best work comes in changing tempo. Watch Thurman out at range with many of his opponents and it almost looks as though he is sparring: pawing out the jab, lazily throwing in the odd body shot. Then as soon as his opponent bites on something and swings back, a left hook snaps their head around at twice the speed he was previously punching.
This lead, drop away, and left hook was a nightmare for Lopez and for Danny Garcia who kept chasing Thurman back into his counter.
Thurman has often been advertised as a terrific puncher, though in fact he is probably just a stern hitter with great timing. By consistently leading, retreating, and scoring the counter left hook he has shaken many very solid fighters to their boots. Left hook aside, as a technician he has got it all: lead hand uppercuts, wide rights to the body, feints. When his man is coming on too quickly, he digs the right uppercut to the solar plexus to settle them down. When he’s hurt he can clinch or run for it and knows when to switch between the two. If you wanted an excellent all-around technician to learn from, Thurman would be a great fighter to study.
While the Lopez fight might have been affected by some ring rust, it did continue a theme. In Thurman’s fight with Shawn Porter—a belting scrap and a fight of the year candidate—Thurman was put on the defensive early and struggled to get off the back foot. He is defensively savvy and slick, but seems all too aware of that and spent long periods covering along the ropes as Porter dug good body shots and flurries. Thurman would clip off the odd counter—and these eventually won Porter’s respect and forced him to slow his offence—but there were long periods where Porter was scoring multiple shots and Thurman was busy trying to time him with just one. Shelling up too willingly could be an issue against Pacquiao, whose whole style is built around handcuffing his man with volume.
One of the interesting elements of this matchup is Pacquiao’s tendency to lunge. You will remember Tim Bradley and his coaches spotted this and planned for it—the Pacquiao left hand is often accompanied by a bit of an uncontrolled fall into range. Even in Pacquiao’s last fight, Adrien Broner did nothing for most of the bout but scored effective counter left hooks when Pacquiao dropped his right hand to lunge with his left. Thurman is longer and rangier than Pacquiao and by keeping his head back in his stance he can perhaps exaggerate this and get Pacquiao really reaching onto counters.
Pacquiao’s last loss, against Jeff Horn, was a controversial one but Horn’s success came largely from bullying the smaller Pacquiao in ugly not-quite-clinch exchanges. For all of Thurman’s craft, he can actually play the bully fairly well when it is called for—as in the opening rounds of the Danny Garcia fight. And perhaps that is Thurman’s strength in this fight: he can work in a couple of different ways, where Pacquiao’s success has always come from simply doing the usual Pacquiao style and if it is not working he will pick up the pace and give it even more Pacquiao. That being said, any amount of Pacquiao is still enough to overwhelm many of the best fighters in the world today.
