MANILA: Philippine boxing hero Manny Pacquiao will battle US fighter Brandon Rios in Macau in November, organizers said yesterday, in a match that promoters hope will ignite Chinese interest in big-time boxing.
The bout — at the luxury Venetian Macao casino resort — will be Pacquiao’s first fight outside the United States since 2006.
“The fight is green and go,” Pacquiao’s chief management adviser, Michael Koncz, told AFP, adding the arrangements had been finalized with Top Rank, the Las Vegas-based boxing promotion agency that handles the Filipino boxing superstar.
Koncz, who traveled to the United States for negotiations, said they chose Rios, 26, over fellow American fighter Mike Alvarado because the former’s style would fit Pacquiao better.
“Rios’s style suits Manny because Rios is willing to fight and stand right in front of Manny,” he said by phone from the United States.
“It is going to be big.
-It’s something that has never been done in Asia. Asia is the new destination for big time boxing.”
He said there was a plan to tie-up with a Chinese company so it could show the fight through smartphones to the Chinese market.
Bob Arum, chief executive of Top Rank, had previously said he wanted to put Chinese boxer Zou Shiming on the undercard with Pacquiao to further spark interest in China.
Top Rank spokesman Lee Samuels echoed expectations for a head-on collision between Pacquiao and Rios.
“Rios is going to stand and fight in front of Pacquiao. Rios will not take a backward step. Definitely he won’t run,” Samuels said in a telephone call to reporters in Manila.
Rios’s manager, Cameron Dunkin, also confirmed the fight in a phone call to Manila: “Brandon is excited and he is honored to fight Pacquiao,” he said.
For Pacquiao, 34, once regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter of his generation, the Rios match will be a chance to redeem himself after two defeats.
He lost his World Boxing Organization welterweight crown in June last year to US fighter Timothy Bradley, then suffered a shock knockout defeat to Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez in December.
Pacquiao’s sporting achievements made him a national hero, becoming one of the highest paid sportsmen in the world, a showbiz celebrity and, in 2010, a member of parliament.
Viking Warrior looks for inside knowledge on Froch
Meantime, Viking Warrior Mikkel Kessler is preparing for his May 25 unification title bout with Briton Carl Froch by employing a pair of insiders.
WBA ‘regular’ super-middleweight champion Kessler will spar with IBF title-holder Froch’s countrymen Nathan Cleverly and George Groves, as well as unbeaten light-heavyweight prospect Erik Skoglund of Sweden.
Cleverly is the current WBO light-heavyweight champion and a former stablemate of Joe Calzaghe, the ex undisputed super-middleweight and light-heavyweight champion who embarked on a long war of words with Froch before retiring unbeaten in 2008. The two Brits never faced each other.
Like Cleverly and Skoglund, the WBC youth champion, Groves is an unbeaten prospect who fights in the same division as Kessler and Froch.
For Dane Kessler, who beat Froch in their original bout in Copenhagen three years ago, this is the ideal preparation.
“It’s great to have them in Copenhagen. This is the best preparation I could have asked for,” he said in a press release by promoters Sauerland.
“To have three guys like that — a world champion, a youth world champion and a top-ranked contender — is probably as good as it gets in terms of sparring.
“They are young, hungry and unbeaten and they will push me to the limit. That’s exactly the kind of warm-up I need to beat Carl Froch again.”
Froch will have home advantage when he looks to avenge one of his two career defeats to Kessler at the O2 Arena in London later this month.
