Pacquiao reacts to Mayweather’s KO of Tenshin Nasukawa

By Allan Fox

Boxingnews24.com

Manny Pacquiao didn’t look or sound impressed after seeing a clip of Floyd Mayweather’s first round knockout win over Japanese kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa on December 31. Pacquiao (60-7-2, 39 KOs) said that the 5’5″ Tenshin looked small, and he obviously wasn’t just talking about the Japanese fighter’s height. The 20-year-old Tenshin fights at 122 lbs, so he was always going to be too small for a fighter as big as Mayweather.

“He’s a small guy,”Pacquiao said about Tenshin Nasugawa to Villian Fy in giving his thoughts on Mayweather’s win over Tenshin on December 31. “It’s boxing.”

The fight looked like an out of shape middleweight facing a tiny super bantamweight. Mayweather vs. Nasukawa was a s three-round exhibition on December 31 in Saitama, Japan. It was old on PPV outside if the United States. Whether the boxing fans felt they got their money’s worth is unknown. Its’s a subjective thing obviously. Some people loved watching Mayweather destroy Tenshin; whereas others were completely turned off by the mismatch, and unhappy at seeing Mayweather fight someone so much small, weaker and less experienced than him. Mayweather says that it was Tenshin that called him out, and that’s why he chose to fight him. It sounds like a reasonable excuse for Mayweather to have taken the fight. There are a lot of fighters from the boxing world that have been calling Mayweather out, and he’s not answered their challenge to step up and face them. Saul Canelo Alvarez wants a rematch with Mayweather to avenge his loss to him from 2013, but he’s not accepted his challenge. Keith Thurman would love to fight Mayweather, but he’s not shown the desire to face him either.

It’s not surprising that Pacquiao didn’t look impressed with what he saw of the Mayweather-Nasukawa fight. Many boxing fans thought the fight was rigged with the way that Nasukawa went down so easily from a slow left hand that Mayweather hit him with moments into the fight. Mayweather didn’t even appear to load up on the shot. He reached out and threw it half speed, and the shot bowled Nasukawa over like a bowling ball. Nasukawa had zero punch resistance to speak of from the shots that Mayweather was hitting him with. Whether that was a product of Mayweather’s superior size and/or power is unclear. It looked like a professional wrestling type staged event in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans on social media.

READ Floyd Mayweather destroys Tenshin Nasukawa – RESULTS
Mayweather outweighed the tiny Tenshin by over 20 pounds in the fight, and that’s considerable amount when you’re talking about a fighter that weighs only 122 lbs. If this were heavyweights, proportionally, Mayweather would have had a huge weight advantage. When you’re dealing with fighters as small as Tenshin, 20 lbs is a ton of weight to be giving away to your opponent. This was an exhibition match, so anything goes. This wasn’t an official pro fight like Mayweather’s last match against UFC fighter Conor McGregor. That was a joke fight involving a guy with an 0-0 record going against Mayweather.

“That’s his prerogative to say that,” Pacquiao said in response to Mayweather saying that he’s “still retired” following his first round knockout win.

Pacquiao obviously wants a rematch with Mayweather to avenge his loss from 2015. However, Mayweather doesn’t seem to be interested in making that fight happen right now, and it’s unclear whether he ever will. With the money that Mayweather is getting for facing MMA fighters in boxing events, you can understand why he wouldn’t want to face an active real boxer that could hit him back, and possibly beat him like Pacquiao. Mayweather has been inactive against true boxers since his fight with Andre Berto in 2015, so we’re talking about a fighter that has been out of boxing for close to three years. Even if Mayweather trains like mad for a rematch with Pacquiao, he still might lose to him.

Tenshin is a good kick boxer, but he’s clearly not a boxer from what we saw of him against Mayweather. But with the size advantage that Mayweather had over Tenshin, he would have beaten a real boxer if he was facing a tiny super bantamweight. That’s why there are weight classes. Weight classes don’t matter when the fight is an exhibition match, so Mayweather can select whatever tiny MMA fighter he wants for his boxing matches. At some point the fans are going to get sick of watching these farces and tune out completely.

READ Pacquiao seems unimpressed with Mayweather victory over Tenshin
Pacquiao will be fighting this month in defending his WBA World welterweight title against former four division world champion Adrien ‘The Problem’ Broner (33-3-1, 24 KOs) on January 19 on SHOWTIME PPV at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao is a big favorite to defeat the 29-year-old Broner. Pacquiao wants to knockout Broner, and there are many boxing fans that believe he’ll do just that.

“My goal is to knock out Broner,” said Pacquiao. “I am looking for a knockout against Broner. I forgot how much fun winning a fight by knockout was until I stopped Lucas Matthyssee last summer to win the WBA welterweight title. It felt great to win that way and the fans loved it too, so why not try for it again? “

Broner has never been knocked out before during his 11-year professional career. If Pacquiao can stop ‘The Problem’ on January 19, he would be doing something that Marcos Maidana, Shawn Porter and Mikey Garcia were unable to do. That would be pretty special for Pacquiao to do that, and it would be an accomplishment. Right now, Pacquiao is seen as a huge favorite to beat Broner. It’s not enough to beat Broner if Pacquiao wants to get the attention of the boxing world to create headlines. He needs to knock him out in an impressive fashion like he did in stopping Matthysse in the 7th round in his last fight on July 15 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Broner has a good chin, and he’s going to be looking to survive if he realizes that Pacquiao has too much fire power and talent than him. We saw Broner fight to survive against Mikey Garcia, Maidana and Porter. Broner is hard to knockout when he’s decided to go the distance instead of trying to win.

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