LAS VEGAS – Jessie Vargas headed into the biggest fight of his life Saturday (Sunday in Manila) feeling supremely confident he will be able to shock the world.
But the tasked turned out to be a Herculean one as it involved solving one of boxing’s most difficult puzzles.
In the end, Vargas admitted that at his age, the 37-year-old Pacquiao is still hard to figure out as an opponent.
“Fighting Manny Pacquiao was like playing a fast game of chess,” Vargas said in the ring at the Thomas & Mack Center here after yielding his WBO welterweight title to the Filipino icon.
“You have to be alert at all times,” he added.
Vargas witnessed Pacquiao’s unpredictability firsthand in the second round, when, after missing on a jab, he ran into a Pacquiao left straight that sent him down on his butt.
It wasn’t even Pacquiao’s most powerful punch of the night – just a plain left straight that the General Santos City-based southpaw flicked at the right moment, and which found its mark.
Vargas quickly rose and beat the mandatory 8-count, later downplaying the episode as a “flash knockdown” that didn’t hurt him.
But from there, the 27-year-old fighter has been reduced to a backpedaling defensive boxer, just waiting for the perfect time to land the perfect shot.
To Vargas’ credit, he did connect on some overhand rights in the later rounds, but they hardly had enough power to stop Pacquiao in his tracks.
He said Pacquiao still did a good job moving.
“He was very sharp and fast. But we were able to land some counters that we practiced,” Vargas continued.
The blows, however, were not good enough to solve the Pacquiao puzzle.