There’s no doubt that Paulie Malignaggi is one of the best pure boxers in the sport and Manny Pacquiao as arguably the best pound for pound fighter in the world today, but facing opponents such as the rock-chinned warrior like Ricky Hatton for Malignaggi and a much bigger opponent like Oscar De La Hoya for Pacquiao present very tough match-ups for the two said fighters.

Both Hatton and De La Hoya have only been stopped once in their career by even larger and stronger opponents. Hatton was out-classed, out-boxed and out-done better by Floyd Mayweather as he went up to a higher weight division (from140 to147 lbs) to challenge the former pound for pound king. The British fighter was able to survive 10 rounds of constant beating but he went down to the canvass 2 times before the referee decided to stop the one-sided match.

De La Hoya has never been KOed by any opponent at every division he attempted to go up from lightweight up to jr. middleweight. Not until he went up to the middleweight division, a weight that is far away from the division he started in his boxing career (lightweight), to challenge a much bigger Bernard Hopkins in which he was finally stopped via a body shot.

To make this story short, nobody has ever been successful on knocking out the two in their natural weight classes - that’s how tough both of them are to beat, especially through a knockout.

Malignaggi, however, has a big chance of winning against a one-dimensional slugger like Hatton. But does he have a chance to knock this guy out? Especially that Paulie only has 5 knockouts throughout his career out of his 25 wins (2003 was the last time Paulie had KOed an opponent)? Another is that the guy’s currently having some hand injury problems, which is one of the factors for him to consider early retirement as one of his possible options right now.

Pacquiao has been a tremendous knockout fighter throughout his career, but those fights he had were only in the lower weight divisions, having won his last fight in the lightweight division. Now he’s going up to the welterweight division, 12 lbs above the lightweight, to challenge a guy who’s been fighting in the junior middleweight and natural middleweight fighters since 2001.

Having this weight difference between the two, can you still think a guy who started at below flyweight division (106 lbs) would possibly knockout a guy whose chin has been exposed against far bigger and stronger fighters? It may only seem possible because of the reputation Manny posses inside the ring but when we talk about physical realities, a knockout from the Filipino fighter is close to impossibility.

Assuming either of these scenarios (Malignaggi knocking out Hatton and Pacquiao knocking out DelaHoya) will happen, it would be one of the most shocking fights in history. But as for you fans of this sport, which of the two scenarios would shock you most?

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