Jeff Horn plans on knocking out Pacquiao like Marquez did

By Chris Williams: Jeff Horn (16-0-1, 11 KOs) says he’s been studying Juan Manuel Marquez’s brutal knockout of Manny Pacquiao from 2012 so that he can learn from him, and he plans on following what he learned this Saturday night when he faces the Filipino star at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia.

(Photo credit: 7 News Brisbane)

Horn has a 10-point plan in how to beat the 38-year-old Pacquiao. Horn is going to follow that plan to the letter on Saturday night to deal Pacquiao loss No.7 in his career. A defeat for Pacquiao against Horn could be the tipping point to send him into retirement.

Horn, 29, hits as hard as Marquez. He’s not as talented as Marquez, and he doesn’t have a lot of experience fighting Pacquiao. Marquez had fought Pacquiao 3 times by the time he knocked Pacquiao out in their fourth fight. He knew what to expect from Pacquiao after fighting him so many times. Horn is going to have to learn as he goes, and try and use what he learned from watching Marquez’s knockout win.

“The Marquez knockout has definitely been probably our main point,” said Horn via Fighthype. ”Marquez has fought Pacquiao brilliant, probably the best anyone has fought Pacquiao, so he’s someone that we have looked at a lot to land the same punch that Marquez did in the fight which is that big overhand right – that’s definitely what we’ll be looking for.”

Pacquiao isn’t as reckless compared to the way he was in the Marquez fight and before. Pacquiao isn’t storming in the way he did in the 4th fight with Marquez. In Pacquiao’s last 3 fights, he’s been careful in attacking his opponents. Pacquiao was still hit occasionally by Jessie Vargas and Floyd Mayweather Jr. when he attacked, but he didn’t get hit with anything big that could hurt him.

Horn should try and box Pacquiao as much as possible. If Horn tries to go to war with Pacquiao, there might not be time for him for him to go over the other 9 points that his trainer put together for him. Pacquiao will knock Horn out if he tries to brawl with him. Pacquiao is the faster guy with the power that is on the same level as Horn. If Horn gets hit with a shot he doesn’t see, it’ll be all over for him. Pacquiao seems to really want to knock him out for some reason.

This is a different Pacquiao than what I’ve seen in a long, long time. He doesn’t seem to be interested in being nice inside the ring for this fight. If Pacquiao is ruthless, he’s going to put Horn out of his misery quickly on Saturday night. That’s why it’s better if Horn focuses on his boxing so that he has a chance of surviving.

Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum predicts 10 million viewers in United States

“Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Jeff Horn will be shown free to the American public on ESPN, the largest sports network in the world,” said Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum. “ESPN is going all out to promote the event. This audience in the United States for a Manny Pacquiao fight will dwarf anything he’s done in the U.S in the 15, 16 years he’s been fighting in fights broadcast in the United States by far. We’re looking forward to an audience as large as 10 million in the United States,” said Arum.

There will obviously be a large audience in the U.S to watch the Pacquiao-Horn fight on Saturday, because the fight is being televised on free television on ESPN. Pacquiao’s fights have been shown on PPV in the last 10 years in the States. Putting Pacquiao vs. Horn on free television on ESPN guarantees a large audience. But with that said, I don’t think this is a big enough fight to bring in 10 million viewers. Moreover, there’s not a lot of marketing of the Pacquiao-Horn fight.

It was only recently that Top Rank announced that Pacquiao-Horn would be shown on ESPN. Without a lot of money being put into marketing the fight to the casual boxing fans, a lot of fans won’t even know that Pacquiao is fighting on Saturday night. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pacquiao’s fight with Horn brings in only a small audience. It’s not a good fight.

You can imagine if Pacquiao-Horn was a gripping one, HBO Boxing would be all over it, trying to televise it on their network. The fact that HBO and Showtime aren’t putting the fight on suggests that they’re not interested in staging it. Jeff Horn isn’t a well-known fighter in the States. I don’t know why Arum picked Horn out instead of someone the fans have heard of.

Pacquiao would do better if Arum trotted out Tim Bradley again for a 4th time in another example of stale match-making by the 85-year-old Arum. But putting Pacquiao in with an obscure fighter like Horn seems like a really bad idea, worse than the last guy Arum matched Pacquiao against in Jessie Vargas. That was a terrible fight, and a waste of Pacquiao’s time in my view. Pacquiao hasn’t been matched against the right guys to keep his popularity high in the last 4 years.

These are the fighters Arum has matched Pacquiao up with since 2013:

– Brandon Rios

– Chris Algieri

– Tim Bradley x 2

– Floyd Mayweather Jr.

– Jessie Vargas

There’s only good fighter out of the bunch that Arum has put Pacquiao in with, and that was Mayweather. Bradley was a good fighter for Pacquiao to fight once. But there was no reason for Arum to keep matching Pacquiao against him in 3 fights.

Here are the fighters Arum SHOULD have been matching against Pacquiao since 2013:

– Keith Thurman

– Adrien Broner

– Danny Garcia

– Errol Spence Jr.

– Shawn Porter

– Gennady Golovkin

– Saul Canelo Alvarez

– Miguel Cotto

– Amir Khan

– Mikey Garcia

– Vasyl Lomachenko

”This kid Jeff Horn is a big, strong kid. He takes a good punch, and he gives a good punch as well,” said Arum. ”He’s fought some good pros, like [Randall] Bailey and [Ali] Funeka. I really think he can give a good account of himself and give Manny some problems,” said Arum.

Funeka, 38, and Randall Bailey, 43, were good pros when they were younger, but they were not good welterweights by the time Jeff Horn got to them. I don’t know who Arum is trying to kid. Bailey and Funeka are not major players in the welterweight division. Those are not good examples for Arum to be giving in him trying to build up Horn to make him sound better than he actually is.

Arum should have thrown Horn in with Errol Spence Jr. or Shawn Porter if he wanted to brag about him. At least if Horn beat those guys, Arum could brag about how good he is. But I don’t think Horn would even be competitive with Spence and Porter.

Horn’s trainer could come up with a 50-point plan to beat those guys, and he’d still wind getting knocked out by those two guys. 10 point plans only work if you have the talent to utilize them. I think Horn is badly lacking in the talent department for him to beat Spence and Porter, or some of the other contenders in the division.

”Manny has been one of our greatest fighters of this era. He’s very fast, and he knows how to move,” said Arum. ”But remember, he’s getting older. Athletes get older. An athlete that reaches a certain age does not perform as well when he was younger and at his peak. The question is how old has Manny become? I talked to Freddie today at breakfast, and Freddie said he sees more in Manny training for this fight than he had in his previous 2 fights with [Tim] Bradley and [Jessie] Vargas. So we’ll have to see,” said Arum.

Arum sounds pretty desperate in trying to draw interest in the Pacquiao vs. Horn fight. If Arum wants to try and drum up interest in that fight, then he needs to start interviewing left and right with every media organization out there so he can try and convince boxing fans to watch the Pacquiao-Horn fight. Right now, I don’t the casual boxing fans are even aware that Pacquiao is fighting on Saturday. There hasn’t been the promotional muscle thrown into the fight to let the fans know in the U.S that Pacquiao is fighting the unknown Jeff Horn. I don’t think Arum is going to be able to draw a lot of boxing fans for the Pacquiao-Horn fight because it’s another poor match-up for the Filipino star.