Despite knockout drought, Manny Pacquiao still a major draw

MACAU – Manny Pacquiao is struggling to explain his five-year streak without a knockout, as well as why a fight with Floyd Mayweather has yet to happen.

He had difficulty coming up with the right words, unable to provide a cogent explanation. After scoring five stoppages in eight bouts, Pacquiao has now gone eight consecutive fights without a knockout.

Pacquiao stopped Miguel Cotto on Nov. 14, 2009, a comprehensive and impressive victory that led some to believe that he, and not Mayweather, was the sport's finest fighter. And it was only days after that bout that talks began to heat up about the two great champions facing each other.

Five years later, we're still waiting for another Pacquiao win by knockout as well as a fight with Mayweather.

The reason for the excitement over Pacquiao-Mayweather was simple: They were Nos. 1-2 in the world, in whichever order you wanted to put them, and a fight between them offered the boxer-vs.-slugger match that has always intrigued boxing fans.

While the unbeaten Mayweather routed opponent after opponent while rarely being hit, Pacquiao was bludgeoning quality fighters. He battered Oscar De La Hoya over eight one-sided rounds. He starched Ricky Hatton with a single crushing shot. He literally beat Cotto to a bloody pulp.

Technically, Mayweather may have been the better fighter, but Pacquiao was the guy who made the fights exciting. There were knockdowns and knockouts and fast exchanges and all sorts of action that always drew a rise out of the crowds.

Mayweather's bouts were more like a symphony. To watch him was to appreciate a master at his craft plying his work.

Pacquiao, by contrast, was this frenetic ball of energy, power and movement, a whirling dervish who delighted in making the crowd roar by standing in front of his opponent and firing punches until one of them could take no more.

Five years later, Mayweather is much the same as he was in 2009, a defensive wizard who rarely is hit and who rarely takes a risk offensively.

But Pacquiao has evolved into, well, it's hard to know what.

Pacquiao faces Chris Algieri on Saturday at Cotai Arena in a welterweight title fight on HBO Pay-Per-View with more questions about his standing in the sport than there's been since he hooked up with trainer Freddie Roach in 2001.

Perhaps we're being too hard, and far too much is being made of Pacquiao's five-year knockout drought.

Certainly, no one at The Venetian Macao is too worried about it. Pacquiao is a guaranteed winner for the casino, which is why Arum said he was able to get about twice as much from Sands China, The Venetian's parent company, than he would have had he put the fight in Las Vegas.

A stroll through the casino made it pretty clear why. The slot machines and gaming tables were filled a little before noon on an overcast Tuesday. Similarly, the high-end retail area adjacent to the casino was jammed with shoppers, not at all bothered by the obnoxiously inflated prices.

Pacquiao is the attraction, and even though he doesn't score knockouts anymore and even though he's had a couple of losses along the way, putting his name on the marquee is a surefire way to fill a casino and make the action hot and heavy at the gaming tables.

The lack of knockouts has gotten a lot of attention, and Mayweather hasn't let Pacquiao forget that the only knockout in Pacquiao's past eight fights came when he was the victim. He was knocked cold by a perfectly timed counter from Juan Manuel Marquez and wound up face-first on the canvas, a shot that Mayweather has posted repeatedly on social media.

Since stopping Cotto, Pacquiao is 6-2, also coming up on the short end of a dubious decision against Timothy Bradley.

But here is the thing: The six men he's fought since he last scored a knockout (he's fought Bradley and Marquez twice each during the span) have been knocked out a total of three times in their careers.

Joshua Clottey, Marquez, Bradley and Brandon Rios have never been knocked out. Shane Mosley was knocked out once, in his last fight, on Nov. 27, 2013, when he was 42 years old and long, long past his prime. Antonio Margarito was only knocked out twice, in a heated rematch with Cotto and once against Mosley.

Those six have combined to fight 278 bouts and only been stopped three times, finishing on their feet 98.9 percent of the time. Three of them (Marquez for sure, and potentially Mosley and Bradley) may wind up in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

So maybe it's not Pacquiao's fault that he hasn't scored a knockout in five years.

Pacquiao chuckled when he was asked about his knockout drought.

"It would mean a lot [to knock out Algieri]," he said as he finished wrapping his hands. "It would mean a lot. If the knockout comes, it will come. But like I said, I'm not the guy who predicts the [outcome] of the fight. I don't want to predict the fight and I just want to do my best."

Roach, made a slight change in his approach during camp, hoping to rekindle the legendary Pacquiao power.

He had Pacquiao hitting the heavy bag a lot more in camp than he'd done recently in an attempt to work on bringing back the power.

"Strength," Roach said when asked what hitting the heavy bag more frequently did for Pacquiao. "When Manny hits the bag, the whole gym stops. I mean, everyone looks at the pop he has, the power and the speed. The mitts are good for the speed and coordination and so forth, but the heavy bag is for strength. The heavy bag was a vital part of our training camp for this fight."

Roach seems confident Pacquiao will stop Algieri on Saturday, noting, "This isn't a Rocky fight. This is real."

But at the end of the day, it might not matter. Pacquiao's fans remain as fervent and loyal forever, and they turn up in massive numbers to support him.

He wants to fight Mayweather, he reiterated several times, but he's also not obsessing over something out of his control.

"I'm a fighter and I fight [opponents] who want to fight," Pacquiao said.

Hopefully, it will be against Mayweather one day. Arum intimated yet again that his friend, Les Moonves, the chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation, is working behind the scenes to bring a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight to fruition.

Whether that happens is a matter of debate.

But what's not is that after all these years, the fans are just as enamored with Pacquiao as they've ever been.

Knockouts or not, Mayweather or not, the fans just can't get enough of Manny.