LAS VEGAS – While selecting Manny Pacquiao as the winner against Tim Bradley on Saturday night, Panamanian legend Roberto Duran is actually no fan of the Filipino icon.
Aside from stating that he would have handled Pacquiao if they had fought during his heyday, Duran insisted on Thursday that they didn’t have similar styles as many ringsiders tend to believe.
“Pacquiao only has one style and he doesn’t change,” said the 64-year-old Duran.
In scoring close to 120 wins against 16 losses, most of them coming at the tail-end of a Hall of Fame career, Duran feels he is the ultimate package, the one boxer who would have no problem dealing with Pacquiao’s off-beat style and even Floyd Mayweather’s safety-first approach.
“Pacquiao doesn’t know how to fight someone like Mayweather unlike me who could fight against different styles and everyone of them. I would have beaten the two of them.”
Duran, who won world titles at lightweight, welter, super-welter and middleweight, boasted also that he “fights intelligently than most of the current crop of fighters.”
Told that Pacquiao sometimes resembles him, Duran’s facial expression changed.
“We don’t look the same even though I used to sport a moustache and a goatee. Pacquiao and me, we don’t look alike because I am better-looking than him,” said Duran. (Nick Giongco)