Pacquiao makes KO offer we can’t refuse

AS THOUGH it was necessary, Manny Pacquiao had to make a formal announcement about his prime goal in the Third Encounter against WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley in April.

Pacquiao, listen closely, will go for a knockout!

“Why not?” Pacquiao said in New York over the weekend, as reported by close-in writer Aquiles Zonio yesterday.

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For the record, Pacquiao did go for a KO in his first time to take on Bradley in June 2012.

There’s no denying he also tried to pin down and finish off Bradley in their second encounter two years later.

His failure to score a stoppage has resulted in what Pacquiao now calls “unfinished business.”

There were also those who started to doubt his ability to score a stoppage again.

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Anyway, based on results, there were two reasons [to choose from] why the powerful, tigerish international boxing superhero failed to produce the desired stoppage on both occasions.

Either Bradley proved too tough and extremely elusive or Pacquiao did not himself pack the old killer punch during both bouts.

Now, Pacquiao says he wants to close his rivalry with Bradley emphatically.

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“I want to win convincingly,” he said.

Before this, the loudest Pacquiao could do was say, “I will put every ounce of my being into this fight, my last.”

After tarrying, Pacquiao now openly declares he wants the KO, a sensational feat he last delivered against a drained Miguel Cotto in 2009.

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Of course, Pacquiao has been raring to put the curtains down on his sensational career in truly sensational fashion, a glorious knockout victory.

It goes without saying Pacquiao would be out to ignite a classic firefight, a sure lure that should fuel enthusiasm for the Third Encounter.

There are now better chances at marketing the Pacquiao-Bradley trilogy. The offer of a blazing knockout, long absent from the Pacquiao repertoire, can’t be shrugged off even by jaded spectators.

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(PRIME: The nationalist author-poet Rogelio Ordoñez will be signing copies of his book, “Undermining Patrimony,” tomorrow starting at 1 p.m at the Bonifacio Hall of Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in Sta. Mesa, Manila. The book is a prime effort at exposing large-scale mining plunder in Mindanao by local and transnational corporations. Mabuhay.)