Floyd Sr: Maidana is a tougher fight for Mayweather than Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 04/25/2014 - Comments

maidana445555By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Sr. no longer sees Manny Pacquiao as being a tough opponent for his son Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) after watching how 40-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez dusted Pacquiao off in 6 rounds in 2012. To Floyd Sr, he sees WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) as by far the tougher fight for Mayweather Jr. than a fight against 35-year-old Pacquiao, who Mayweather himself feels has lost the power that he once had in his punches.

Floyd Sr’s view on Maidana being a tougher fight for Mayweather Jr. than Pacquiao is echoed by a great many boxing fans, who see Maidana’s huge punching power, youth, aggressiveness and chin as making him far more dangerous to Mayweather than Pacquiao is at this point in his career. We just saw Pacquiao get hurt by a very light hitter in Tim Bradley in their fight in April 12th of this month, and Pacquiao’s power seemed to be missing in action once again.

It’s gotten to the point where even Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has come out by saying he thinks Pacquiao’s problem is he’s fighting in the wrong division. He should be fighting at light welterweight, Roach said. Roach didn’t feel this way when Pacquiao was knocking out guys like Oscar De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto at 147.

“Manny and Floyd? That would be the easiest fight Floyd could make,” Mayweather Sr. said to LA Times. “This fight [Maidana] right here would be harder than Manny, believe me. Floyd would have whooped [Pacquiao] anyway, but he’d kill him now because Pacquiao just got clipped by Marquez. Marquez knocked the [stuffing] out of Pacquiao. So you think Manny could come back and whip Floyd after that? Don’t you worry about Manny; Pacquiao ain’t nobody, ain’t never been nobody when it comes to fighting Floyd.”

You can definitely make a good argument that Maidana is the tougher fight for Mayweather now than a fight against Pacquiao. We saw how tired Pacquiao looked against Bradley recently, and the old power didn’t have any affect at all on Bradley’s chin. If you take Bradley into a time machine and drop him in the middle of the ring against Pacquiao the night he beat Cotto in 2009, I doubt Bradley would have saw the 3rd round. Pacquiao was so much quicker and stronger at that point in his career. He had the killer instinct for sure.

I’m not sure what’s happened to the Filipino star. Is it age or is he not training as hard as he did before? His former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza had Pacquiao focusing on power for the Cotto and De La Hoya fights. Did Pacquiao go away from that part of his training? If so, he needs to go back and focus on getting his strength back. It’s possible that if he brought Ariza back and had him duplicate the same training regimen that he used during those years we might see Pacquiao’s strength return.



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