De la Hoya: 'It'll be a disaster if I don't KO Pacquiao'

MANILA, Philippines - Manny Pacquiao is hoping to knock out the bigger Oscar de la Hoya. If the chance presents itself.

But not for de la Hoya. He expects to knock out Manny Pacquiao.

De la Hoya hinted in a media conference call on Monday (Tuesday morning, Manila time) that he is preparing for a quick ending - no more, no less.

"I will be extremely, extremely disappointed if this fight doesn't end in a knockout," de la Hoya said. "It will be a total disaster."

Just last week, de la Hoya couldn't be counted on to make a serious prediction as to how long the fight will last.

He sounded either sarcastic (De la Hoya's response to Freddie Roach's nine-round forecast? "We'll catch Pacquiao in five so we don't get to nine.") Or plain uninterested ("It may end in the seventh because that's my lucky number.").

On Monday, de la Hoya's response was lockdown serious.

Asked what changed in between the time he was flip-flopping about how the match would end and the sudden gravity of his tone during the conference call, de la Hoya said training camp lit a fire inside him.

"When you prepare yourself for a fight, you get stronger, you get faster and you feel confident. And the fight comes closer, you feel good about yourself. You're almost at a 100 percent. You feel like King Kong in that you can destroy anybody," de la Hoya said.

"That's the way I feel right now and I'm sure that Manny Pacquiao feels the same way."

De la Hoya opened to the public his Big Bear workout last week. It showed a visibly thinner Golden Boy who admitted he felt "right at home" at 147lbs.

"When we started training camp, we were at 10 percent. But at the end of training camp, we're at 100 percent," de la Hoya said.

"And our strength is up, our speed is up and we [feel like we] can conquer the world," he said. "That's just what I feel now." - GMANews.TV

Source: http://www.gmanews.tv/story/134124/De-la-Hoya-Itll-be-a-disaster-if-I-dont-KO-Pacquiao

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