MACAU—He was soundly beaten, but he did not go down.
For all his boxing faults, Brandon Rios can take pride in withstanding Manny Pacquiao’s sporadic assaults and barrage of punches.
It will indeed take a bulldozer for him to fall as Rios had claimed in an interview with Bad Left Hook.com.
And Pacquiao wasn’t a bulldozer on Sunday. He was just a wrecking machine.
Rios absorbed 281 of Pacquiao’s 790 punches, but refused to surrender.
He even gamely traded shots despite being outgunned and outworked. Rios landed 138 of 502 punches himself and left a mouse on Pacquiao’s right cheek.
A lot of boxing experts, including Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach, believe that Pacquiao was just being compassionate and did not try to finish him off.
Pacquiao, after all, stopped bombarding him with wicked bloody blows and head shots in the homestretch.
Rios can also console himself with the thought that Pacquiao admitted that he got hurt in the fifth round.
In contrast, Rios denied that Pacquiao ever hurt him though he showed up in the prefight conference donning shades to conceal a cut on his left eyebrow and a lump near his right eye.