LOS ANGELES — Hotly favored Manny Pacquiao prepared to shift to war mode Sunday, a full week before his big battle in Las Vegas, but the Sportsbook here registered a considerable dip in his bet approval rating.
Pacquiao?s windy workman?s hair is set to be trimmed Monday, the goatee he had grown in training shaven, but there were contrasting speculations on why the enormous odds favoring him to repeat over Marco Barrera slid.
From a whopping minus-350, it?s down to minus-290, meaning you?d need to wager $290 for a possible return of only $100.
Barrera, on the other hand, is plus-230, a $100 bet yielding $230.
One guess on why adventurous fight fans, including Mexicans, have opted to suddenly pull their bet on the Pacman were well-founded reports on his defensive lapses, as shown in his sparring.
Twenty-one-year-old Daniel Cervantes, an alternate in the 2004 Mexico Olympic team, banged it up again with Pacquiao Sunday and repeated his earlier claim that the RP boxing superhero was not exactly untouchable.
?I got him again several times, but today is my best day so far,? claimed the good-looking fighter with a 10-0 record.
Cervantes, who finished his chore pretty fired-up, said he felt Pacquiao even got mad at one point when he tagged him with good head shots.
Pacquiao, who has totalled more than 130 rounds of sparring, closes the drill with a final session Monday.
Another guess on why Pacquiao has lost bet backing was the incisive primer shown by HBO after the classic Taylor-Pavlik championship bout from Atlantic City Sunday.
There was a portion in the primer that had Freddie Roach flatly denying Pacquiao?s claim that his sudden departure from here to train in Cebu early last month, was pre-planned.
What, however, stood out in the presentation were the distractions Pacquiao had to undergo, a total opposite of Barrera?s placid training in Guadalajara.
Pacquiao was to hear mass Sunday and receive departure blessings at the Christ the King church off Rossmore here, a kilometer from Wild Card.
He got a merry, if sometimes wild, send-off from adoring fans at the end of his workout Sunday.
?We did it only twice,? Roach later told the Philippine Daily Inquirer of the special crushing combination — a spear and slash — which they have been trying to perfect and use as the main weapon against Barrera.
There was hardly an alarm inside Team Pacquiao over the shift of betting preferences, as specified in the website bodog.com.
