The tagline for Manny Pacquaio vs. Jessie Vargas is ?The Legend vs. The Champ,? but it could very easily be confused for ?The Heist.? No offense to WBO Welterweight champion Jessie Vargas, but the machinations for this fight and its creation is purely to pad the pockets of last era holdover Manny Pacquiao.
Of course, there is the matter of Vargas making the first defense of his recently won WBO belt standing in the way of Pacquiao?s cash grab. In most cases, Vargas possesses the kind of factors that would make an aged fighter like Pacquiao think twice before going in the ring with him?then again, Vargas was not picked by pure chance.
Vargas is younger, taller and enjoys a significant reach advantage over Pacquiao heading into the ring. Not only that, Vargas has shown in his past two fights at Welterweight that he is punching harder and crisper than he did as a previously reigning 140-pound champion. He dropped Timothy Bradley and stopped Sadam Ali, making it seem that he is putting more force behind his punches than before.
Though his KO percentage may be misleading, so too does his record and legitimacy at the high levels of the game. Vargas had been guided very carefully on his way to winning his title at 140, being on the good side of very questionable decisions along the way, but failed his audition on the big stage when Bradley gave him a boxing lesson for the 11 rounds, two minutes and forty seconds before Vargas finally dropped him.
Height, reach and youth are not thing that seem to trouble Pacquiao as much as good lateral movement and counter-punching does. Pacquiao previously fought Chris Algieri, who shared the almost identical advantages as Vargas does, and the light-hitting Algieri was pummeled like a bad pi?ata all night.
Stylistically, Vargas presents very little trouble for Pacquiao outside of a long jab and his defining feature?his toughness?plays right into Pacquiao?s hands, which will be apparent from the get-go. Pacquiao?s people reached out to Vargas and didn?t run into him by chance. The choosing of the opponent was by design, just like the subsequent beating of him will be.
Whether or not Pacquiao will make something out of what may end up being the last run of his legendary career is yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain is that Pacquiao will violently and lopsidedly beat Vargas on his way to another championship win.
