By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar de La Hoya is giving the edge to Floyd Mayweather Jr in a fight against Manny Pacquiao if the two of them face each other in the next few months. De La Hoya thinks that Mayweather has more left of his skills right now compared to the 36-year-old Pacquiao, who has looked stationary since his knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.
De La Hoya thinks that Pacquiao would have given Mayweather a run for his money and possibly beaten him three years ago, but right now he doesn’t see that Pacquiao as capable of beating Mayweather, even though Pacquiao is two years younger than him.
“Who would I give the edge to today? I would have to go with Floyd,” De La Hoya said when talking about who would win if Mayweather faces Pacquiao this year. “Three years ago it would have been Pacquiao.”
De La Hoya is a smart man. It’s hard to disagree with him here, except for the part where he says Pacquiao would have beaten Mayweather three years ago.
Mayweather showed in his last fight against Marcos Maidana that he has the leg movement to give the 5’6” Pacquiao all kinds of problems. Pacquiao doesn’t move like he used to, and he would be in a real bind in a fight against Mayweather unless it was a fight similar to Mayweather’s first bout against Marcos Maidana last year.
If Mayweather opts to stand in one place and not move, then Pacquiao would have a chance to try and overwhelm Mayweather with punches the same way Maidana attempted this strategy. However, Mayweather adapts to his opponents and it usually only takes him a short period of time before he makes those changes to his game.
In the first Maidana fight, Mayweather took four rounds before he figured Maidana out and adapted to what he was doing to go on and out-box him. But against Pacquiao, it’s not likely that Mayweather will need to wait four rounds before he makes changes to his game. He’ll very likely be using movement from the 1st round if Pacquiao tries to put a lot of pressure on him.
“Fighting Manny Pacquiao will remove any doubts that anybody had about Floyd,” De La Hoya said. “Fight Pacquiao. Everybody wants to see Manny Pacquiao. If everyone thinks that Manny Pacquiao can beat Floyd, great. It’s one of those fights where anybody can win.”
Fighting Pacquiao will of course shut the mouths of a lot of the critics that mistakenly believe that Mayweather is afraid of Pacquiao and that he’s been avoiding him. But you can’t put the blame on Mayweather for the Pacquiao fight not taking place because Pacquiao had his chance to fight Mayweather in 2010 when the two of them started negotiations the fight for the first time.
It’s not Mayweather’s fault that Pacquiao didn’t agree to the full blood testing that he wanted for the fight. I think a lot of boxing fans aren’t too well versed on what happened in those negotiations. If Mayweather had dropped his request for blood testing, then the fight likely would have happened, but why should Mayweather have done so?
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