Jeff Horn brushing off criticism over Pacquiao scores

Australia’s Jeff Horn, the new WBO welterweight champion and new No. 1 welterweight in the world by BoxRec rankings, is doing his best to ignore the cries of robbery and the overall debate of his weekend win over Manny Pacquiao, which is probably for the best.

Here’s what he has to say right now:

"There will always be a backlash where people say I got lucky, or whatever. There will always be the naysayers saying I didn't win the fight, but I felt like I won the fight. Everyone has a right to their opinion. I'm sure I've [gained] a lot more fans over there than I've lost. ... Manny Pacquiao is an absolute warrior, a legend of the sport. He might have come underdone in this fight, I don't know. I guess if we have a rematch and he put his all in, he might come in better, I don't know."

It is expected that Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KO) will exercise his rematch clause to face Horn (17-0-1, 11 KO) again, unless Freddie Roach or someone else does talk Manny into retiring. As I said on Sunday morning, even if you think Pacquiao won the fight, he was clearly not at his best in this fight, for one reason or another, or perhaps several, and Roach seems to feel that Manny may now finally have too much on his plate to be the boxer he’s capable of being.

This is all probably the right attitude for Horn to take, though. It could be worse, he could sit down, watch the fight, and write a Facebook post detailing how he feels the fight should have been scored, which would be his right and all, but would simply open up further debate and backlash from people who don’t agree. As it is, he appears set to go on about his business, now a made man in the pro boxing world. You can’t fault that.