By Chris Williams: Sam Watson, a close confident of manager Al Haymon, doesn’t see WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) having any problems beating WBO 147 pound champion Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) in their proposed fight on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Watson thinks Mayweather moves too well, and is too strong for Pacquiao to deal with in this fight. He sees this one going badly for Filipino star.
Watson feels that the fight will get put together. He’s not saying when the contract will be signed, but he feels sure that the fight will go ahead.
“Mayweather wants to fight Pacquiao,” Watson said. “I’m sure Al [Haymon] and Bob Arum are getting together to get this done. Manny will fight Floyd and Manny will hit Floyd. But Floyd moves too good, he’s too strong, and too smooth. He’ll bust him [Pacquiao] up in three or four rounds, and then he’ll go to work,” Watson said.
Pacquiao does cut up when he’s hit a lot. There’s a lot of scar tissue around both of Pacquiao’s eyes that Mayweather can take advantage of with his slicing shots. Watson is probably right about Mayweather cutting Pacquiao with his punches in the first three to four rounds. I can’t see Pacquiao being able to fight at a high level once he’s blinded by the blood in his eyes.
In looking at how difficult of a time Pacquiao had in his two fights against Tim Bradley each time he was faced with movement from the American, I think it’s going to be really difficult for Pacquiao to handle the movement that Mayweather uses against him. We got a little taste of Mayweather’s ability to move around the ring in his last fight against Marcos Maidana last September.
Boxing fans and some so-called expert trainers like Freddie Roach thought that Mayweather had lost his legs and could no longer move around the ring like he once did. But Mayweather showed in that fight that he could not only move well around the ring, he could do it for the full 12 rounds. Pacquiao doesn’t have the reach or the leg speed to try and catch Mayweather if he uses movement for 12 rounds.
This could lead to Mayweather picking Pacquiao off with shots for 12 rounds, and rarely getting hit. Pacquiao will likely get frustrated like he sometimes does, and start banging his gloves together in a way that is basically him begging his opponent to stand still so he can brawl. Mayweather won’t do this though, because he knows it’s the only way Pacquiao will have a chance of winning the fight.
It’s imperative that Pacquiao have a stationary Mayweather to fight on May 2nd, because he stands no chance against Mayweather if he moves around like he did in his second fight against Maidana.
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