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While waiting to see if Brandon Rios’ first few punches will show Manny Pacquiao to be a shot fighter, it was nice to see the old Pacquiao personality still intact amid a fracas that had to make some Chinese nostalgic for the days when Chairman Mao banned boxing.

Pacquiao has always been so likable because he gets it when nobody else seems to.

Pacquiao was a peacemaker in public appearances not long after the opposing camps faced off like schoolyard bullies during recess a couple of days ago at the Venetian in Macao. He laughed at it. He asked everybody to forget the grudges and remember that they are engaged in sport. The Filipino Congressman might never be his country’s president. But he’d be a good diplomat. For years, he’s been an ambassador for a sport desperate for one.

Pacquiao wasn’t there for boxing’s latest assault on decorum. Too bad. If he had been, maybe the embarrassing incident, which grew out of a scheduling conflict, might not have played out, ad nauseam, on video that went viral. He might have told trainer Freddie Roach to leave it alone, to let the Rios camp have the gym for a few extra minutes. He might have talked Roach out of confronting Rios trainer Robert Garcia and mostly Alex Ariza, the conditioning coach and provocateur who moved from the Pacquiao corner to the Rios camp with no apologies, yet plenty of insults.

As it was, the racial epithets and vulgar threats made everybody look bad, other than perhaps Rios, who practiced some Switzerland-like neutrality as he stayed busy on an exercise machine while the noisy chaos played out in front of him.

That Rios didn’t get involved is reason to suspect that the drama wasn’t exactly spontaneous. Rios loves a good brawl, doesn’t he? But he remained a bystander, even when Ariza tried to drop-kick Roach. He was just part of an audience for a scuffle that provides an edge to HBO’s 24/7 and a potential boost for the network’s pay-per-view telecast Saturday (9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT) from China. During the week of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, that might sound like just another conspiracy theory. But, hey, it makes as much sense as anything else on the grassy knoll.

After all, can somebody please explain why both camps were using the same gym? According to news reports and tourist brochures, the Venetian Macao is the biggest casino in the world. It covers 10,500,000 square feet, which makes it the sixth largest building in the world. That’s big enough to occupy a couple of zip codes. There are 3,000 suites and 1,200,000 square feet of convention space. But there’s no room for a second gym?

The hostility between Roach and Ariza isn’t exactly a secret, yet the shared gym put them on a collision course. When was the last time opposing camps used the same gym in Las Vegas during the week before a big fight at one of casinos on The Strip? It just doesn’t happen, yet for some unexplained reason it did in Macao.

From the Roach side of the confrontation, the flare-up might be a symptom of the unknown. There has to be some anxiety in not knowing whether Pacquiao will display any ill effects from getting knocked out so savagely last December by Juan Manuel Marquez. Roach has revised his prediction. Pacquiao by KO within four rounds instead of six, he said, after watching Pacquiao in training camp. But nobody can say for certain how he will react when that first Rios’ punch lands.

That uncertainty was the theme of a conference call with Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and Tim Bradley.

“Rios needs to be very careful because I once was knocked out and I came back and won the title,’’ said Duran, who came back almost as dangerous as ever after Thomas Hearns knocked him out in 1984. “So, by no means can you count Manny Pacquiao out. He is a very dangerous fighter. Brandon Rios needs to be intelligent in the ring, protect himself at all times because he doesn’t know where these hits are coming from. Manny Pacquiao is not finished in my eyes and I still believe he is one of the world’s most dangerous fighters in the world.’’

Leonard, Duran’s old rival, has a different take. He thinks Rios should begin to test Pacquiao immediately in a quick attempt to test his mental state in his first fight since the KO.

“What Brandon Rios needs to do is not let Pacquiao forget about what took place in his last fight,’’ Leonard said. “Rios has to jump right on top of Pacquiao, because what happens is when you get knocked out in the fashion that Pacquiao was knocked out, it becomes like an Achilles heel. But if there is anyone that could block that out, Pacquiao is definitely the guy to do that. This fight depends on whose game plan, who dominates the other, takes control early in the fight.’’

So far, at least, Pacquiao looks to be as cool and confident as ever. The calm within the storm was still there a few days ago. His body language provides an interesting forecast, but not a reliable one for the moment when that storm moves into the ring.

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