By Rob Smith: Bernard Hopkins came out tonight on the Jim Rome show and gave his thoughts on whether Manny Pacquiao will be the same fighter after being knocked out viciously in the 6th round last Saturday night by Juan Manuel Marquez. Hopkins doesn’t see Pacquiao being the same fighter after that knockout. Pacquiao was unconscious for close to two minutes, face down on the canvas from Marquez’s right hand.
Hopkins said this to the question from Rome about whether the knockout punch is the type that can end careers: “It’s one of those types of knockouts that you can recover from in life, but I don’t think you can recover fully in the sport. That was a devastating knockout that has a long term effect…It was such a devastating knockout that he will ever be the Pacquiao that he was.”
Hopkins went on to say that he thinks that Pacquiao should take an entire year off to recover from the knockout. He didn’t say whether he thinks Pacquiao should retire, but he does think he needs to take a seriously long break to try and get things together from that KO.
It’s doubtful that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will have him out of the ring for an entire year. His trainer Freddie Roach wants to keep Pacquiao out of the ring for 8 months, but it’s unlikely that Arum will agree to that. We’ll most likely see Paquiao fighting in four months in April against Marquez or possibly Brandon Rios. If Pacquiao gets knocked out again then Arum will know it was a bad idea to bring him back so soon. Pacquiao hasn’t taken any long breaks from boxing during his career, and he’ll likely resist the notion of him staying out of the ring for 8 to 12 months. That just doesn’t seem like Pacquiao. He’ll find out the hard way that he’s not invincible if he rushes back into the ring with Marquez or Rios, and gets knocked unconscious again.
There’s a belief that if a fighter suffers a knockout like the one that Pacquiao suffered that it makes them more prone to getting knocked out easier in the future. If you look at fighters that have suffered bad knockouts it sure looks like that’s the case because a lot of them do seem to get knocked out easier following a bad knockout.