Pacquiao Dismantles Clottey in Ruthless Style

Image by AFP via Daylife

Manny Pacquiao’s dominant 12 round performance over Joshua Clottey at the Cowboys Stadium, Texas on Saturday night solidifies the Filipino’s position as the best fighter on the planet today. On my scorecard Pacquiao won every single round of the fight and rarely looked troubled by his much larger opponent.

The Ghanaian fighter didn’t present much of a challenge to Pacquiao and spent most of the 12 rounds hiding behind an extremely tight guard. Pacquiao blitzed Clottey with power punches from all angles, side stepping to hammer his body and clubbing hooks around the challengers gloves. Occasionally, Clottey had success with single shots, but throwing a paltry 33 punches per round as opposed to Pacquiao’s 103 punch per round (a career high for the Filipino), he didn’t really give himself a chance. As the rounds wore on Pacquiao’s attention to Clottey’s body began to pay dividends and the African fighter began to slow significantly. Clottey managed to land some trademark left uppercuts in close and was interestingly sometimes quicker to the punch on the outside, but he never sustained an offense and basically took himself out of the fight.

Pacquiao’s relentless combination punching was astonishing to watch. He never took his foot off the gas and simply threw combo after combo presenting a vortex of angles that Clottey just could not navigate. Whenever the Filipino finished punching, he would side step or spin out forcing Clottey to reset himself. And when he did, Pacquiao would leap in again making it almost impossible for him to mount any sort of effective counter attack.

While Clottey did not give the best account of himself, it should be remembered that this was the same Clottey that beat up Miguel Cotto and went toe to toe with Antonio Margarito with two broken hands. There is a case to be made that Clottey should have put it all on the line against Pacquiao, but when faced with an opponent throwing as many punches as Pacquiao did, it is easy to criticize and less easy to comprehend what was actually going on in the ring. Pacquiao wanted Clottey to open up so he could counter him, and Clottey realized pretty early on that the champion’s quickness would allow him to do so with ease. So Clottey put his hands up and waited for openings. And unfortunately for him, there weren’t many.

Pacquiao was too good, too fast and too clever.

After the bout, Clottey offered no excuses for the loss.

“I can tell you, this is the first time I lost a fight,” he said. “All my other losses, I never thought I lost. But this time, I lost.”

Characteristically, Pacquiao was gracious about his opponent and explained that fighting him wasn’t quite as easy as it may have looked.

“It was not an easy fight, it was hard. He’s a hard fighter,” said Pacquiao. “He took a lot of punches and was never hurt…..I felt his power. He is very strong.”

Given Clottey’s unwillingness to trade, it was not the most spectacular of fights, but it highlighted just how good Pacquiao is against the very best in the world. Pacquiao has one major fight left, and that is against the winner of Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather. And given his performance over Clottey, I’d make him a good favorite over both.

Shane Mosley would go toe to toe with the Pac Man and in my view would probably loses a unanimous decision to the slightly faster and more accurate Pacquiao. It would be a fascinating war of dynamic punching, but Mosley might be a little bit too old to close the show against the fresher Filipino.

While Mayweather has the accuracy and speed to catch Pacquiao, I cannot see the ‘Money May’ landing enough punches over the course of the bout to get a decision. Pacquiao’s aggression, speed and consistency are the perfect combination to unlock the Mayweather defense, and I see him hurting Mayweather and winning a clear decision over 12 hard fought rounds.