Pacquiao vs. Ugas: The Fight Site Predictions
Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images
Manny Pacquiao continues to raise the bar for boxers everywhere.
This Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas, he once again fronts up against a big, powerful welterweight champion in Yordenis Ugás in a bid to regain another strap —this time a WBA title, albeit one of the WBA’s many welterweight straps.
The fight was originally meant to feature a genuinely slightly terrifying opponent for the Pac-man in Errol Spence, the monstrously strong and double-cardioed-up holder of two of the welterweight division’s belts, but since Spence dropped out of the fight to get reparative eye surgery, Cuban veteran Yordenis Ugás, 35 stepped in at short notice to take up the mantle.
Mateusz Fenrych: An aging Cuban amateur you say? Sign me up!!
Actually, I’m not sure I’m going to be quite so enthusiastic about this one. Yordenis Ugás is not a bad fighter to tell you the truth; no Cuban boxer who won bronze at an Olympics is going to be bad, or uninteresting.
He’s just a bit more, shock-horror for a Cuban, a bit more meat-and-potatoes than my usual Cuban faves.
In his last fight with Abel Ramos, a fight for the then-vacant WBA welterweight title, he controlled a game opponent mostly with a useful double-jab and some intermittent bodywork. Like many a good Cuban he was able to control the pace of the fight; often when Ramos even looked like making a move, Ugás would pop him with the double jab and try a right straight.
Ramos was troubled enough by the range that Yugás was able to establish that he got outlanded two-to-one, despite Ugás not proving to be a massively prolific puncher.
Ugás’ defence is decent, and against Ramos he kept his opponent to a sub-20% accuracy rate, but it consists mostly of parrying punches with his forearms — a fine technique to be sure, but he doesn’t move his head as often as he could, and his feet were not used a great deal in his defensive maneuvers at all.
What’s more, he seemed to allow Ramos back into the fight a bit more in the later rounds — whereas, early on, Ramos could barely lay a clean glove on Ugás, in the latter half he got jabbed up a fair bit more.
Another point against his favour is that he is not notably fast, either of fist or foot.
This will be a problem versus the remarkable little senator from the Philippines.
Manny Pacquiao is very accustomed to fighting bigger men by now, of course, and even at an advanced age, he is still very fleet. Against Thurman, admittedly a fight that took place more than a year ago now, he was still full of energy and as fast as it’s reasonable a 40 year old to be.
Ugás is going to have an extremely hard time stopping Pac setting a high pace with just a jab. His shallow footwork is, in this writer’s view, going to be a hindrance for him. With no foot-feints and one-speed handiwork, I can’t see him being able to deter Pac from darting in and out at will.
What’s more, his defence, so reliant on a high-guard parrying system, is not going to be too watertight against Pac’s all-target system of blitzing in.
The Philippino loves to carpet-bomb his opponent with a multitude of strikes as he moves in — he manages to confound Thurman in round 1 with this tactic, catching him off-guard at the end of a blitz, when Thurman thought he’d moved out of range and was safe.
Now, against Thurman, there was a slight suggestion that Pacquiao’s stamina is not quite what it once was. While he was still landing the more powerful meaningful strikes later on in the fight, such as a debilitating bodyshot that had Thurman in real trouble in round ten, he did notably slow down in the championship rounds.
What’s more he became a bit more static in patches, allowing Thurman to catch him clean more often; in fact, according to the Compubox stats, Thurman actually outlanded Pac over the twelve.
This would have been a real issue against the cardio monster that is Errol Spence, but it won’t be against the less active, slower Ugás; I’ll be predicting yet another UD12 for the remarkable Manny, at 42 years of age.
Lukasz Fenrych: Losing Errol Spence from this event lost us a spectacle, the image of Manny Pacquiao going for what would be one of the greatest wins of all time… but in all honesty, it has probably got us a better, more even, fight. With all due respect to him, there was unlikely to be a lot Pacquiao was going to be able to do with Spence, but Ugas, though a fighter with his own strengths, is at 35 years old and not hugely fast, much more achievable win, yet not one he’ll find easy, at this stage of his career.
Who Pacquiao is, we know, the high-volume in-and-out flurries (we’ll get onto how that’ll apply to this matchup a little later on). Ugas on the other hand is much more measured, looking to control his opponent with a consistent jab (which he often doubles up on) and fill the space behind it with right hand shots which, while low on accuracy, serve to make it harder for opponents to blitz into that space. He’s also a dedicated body worker, in particular liking to draw opponents into attacking his head and throwing combinations to the body when they do.
This does lead into one of his weaknesses, though — an approach like that implies confidence in his head movement, but while some of the time, especially when working proactively on the front foot, it’s very good, when forced to set his feet or step back it can get pretty reliant on a simple lean-back, which is obviously a limited defense if he’s trying to throw hooks to his opponent’s ribs. It also becomes a problem if his opponent can beat him to the punch, because as Mateusz noted he’ll tend to resort to relying on sticking his hands up — actively, it’s not a static high guard, but it still takes the momentum out of his own attacks.
Where he’s very good, defensively speaking, is with his feet. He does nothing spectacular or even very fast, but his range management and timing are superb, and he rarely makes the kind of mistakes that get him backed onto the ropes or into a corner. Almost paradoxically, this ability to smoothly move backwards at the right moment makes him a very hard man to actually force back — it’s notable that although Shawn Porter did (somewhat controversially) beat him, he didn’t do so with his usual trademark bullrushes and inside work. Porter’s struggles with weight on that night may have factored into this, but in the early rounds he did try it a number of times, and never really managed to get close enough, instead finding himself falling just short and punished for it.
That will be the key for his strategy against Pacquiao. As noted, the aging legend is an in-and-out sort of fighter (it’s worth remembering that despite his relentless reputation, even in his heyday he was never a hugely high-volume puncher, typically putting up high-but-not-remarkable numbers in the 500s or thereabout, because although he throws in volume when he’s throwing, he’s at range quite a lot of the time), and Ugas will be intent on making the ‘in’ as difficult as possible. We can see some clues to how this might go in Pac’s fight with Thurman — One Time is in some ways quite similar to Ugas in how he wants to fight, managing the range and punishing attempts to close it, but he’s never been a particularly good instinctive reader of an opponent’s timing, which led to him going backwards whenever he was unsure of what Pacquiao was doing, in turn giving Pacquiao the position in front of Thurman needed to find those creative angles he loves.
Ugas, however, has as mentioned very good timing, and is also very good at controlling that space in general, with the earlier-mentioned jab and right hands. Pacquiao won’t find it easy to find or hold the space he wants, and might be reduced to more conventional attacks than we’re used to. That’s not a deal-breaker, he’s still almost certainly quite a lot faster than Ugas and perfectly capable of conventional jab and one-two attacks, but since part of the brilliance of those angles he throws from is that despite their seeming extreme aggression they’re usually quite a safe place to be in once there, since he’s great at putting himself in positions where the opponent would have to punch directly across their own center of balance to land, thus taking the sting off any dangerous shots pretty completely. If Ugas can keep him from them, Pacquiao will be more vulnerable, and if he can punish him for even attempting it, well, it’ll be a very tough night for Pac-man indeed.
On the other hand, where Ugas does show limitations is on varying his own timing, throwing things very much at one pace. What with Pacquiao being a counter-puncher by trade, ultimately — look back at his biggest performances and note how often his combinations come off an opponent’s jab, and not his own set-up work — if the Cuban becomes predictable he could find himself punished for that.
That’s where the contest is for me, then. If he can get outside angles consistently, Pacquiao should have the fight, since Ugas for all his neatness has never shown the kind of improvisation you’d need to keep up with him there. If he can’t, he’s in for a tough night. I’m a little torn on where to go, but I’m going to be a little pessimistic, suggest that even against a 35-year-old age will have to start showing itself, and predict a Ugas decision.