By Chris Williams: In the last couple of weeks Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has been talking loud and hard about how Pacquiao is going to knock Floyd Mayweather Jr out when they face each other on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather’s uncle Jeff Mayweather isn’t buying any of what Roach is trying to sell in that regard. Jeff points out that Pacquiao hasn’t knocked anyone out in the past eight years. Jeff is actually off by two years, but he’s closest enough to make his point understood.
It’s been six years scored a knockout and that was against Miguel Cotto in 2009. Even in that fight, you can make an argument that referee Kenny Bayless got ahead of himself when he stopped it suddenly like he did when Cotto was still fighting back at 0:55 left in the final round. In seeing that fight again, I think Cotto could have survived the round had Bayless not stepped in and stopped it with Cotto still on his feet.
“I think that Freddie Roach is doing what he supposed to in selling the fight. Ain’t nothing going happen,” Jeff said via Dontae’s Boxing Nation. “I mean, Manny Pacquiao ain’t knocked nobody out in eight years.”
I agree with Jeff about Pacquiao not being much of a threat to knock Mayweather out in this fight. Pacquiao was once a knockout puncher, but his power evaporated suddenly overnight after the stoppage win over Cotto, and he’s not come close to knocking anybody out since then.
Pacquiao couldn’t even stop Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley, Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley and Chris Algieri. Those are some of the guys he’s fought since the Cotto fights. Mosley and Margarito were a mere shell of their former selves by the time Pacquiao fought them.
Jeff wasn’t ready to say how Mayweather Jr will win the fight on May 2nd, only that he’d win one way or another. “I don’t know. Floyd’s going to win. That’s it.”
I happen to agree with Jeff.
Mayweather wins this fight unless Roach comes up with the perfect plan and Pacquiao follows it to the letter. I don’t think that’s going to happen in this fight. We saw how effective Roach was in barking his instructions to his fighter Zou Shiming last Saturday night in his title shot against IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng.
Roach repeatedly gave Shiming instructions and Shiming seemed to tune him out, and fight on cruise control in throwing single shots instead of throwing the combinations that Roach was practically begging him to throw.
For Pacquiao to have a chance of beating Mayweather, Roach will need to come up with a real masterpiece of a plan, and Pacquiao is going to need to stop fighting the way he normally does and actually do something different to catch Mayweather off guard.
Let’s be real here; Pacquiao isn’t going to beat Mayweather by going primitive with his sloppy style of fighting. As soon as Pacquiao gets reckless in there with Mayweather, he’s going to wind up getting clowned by Mayweather. Pacquiao has got to fight smart and Roach has got to come up with a great plan.
That’s the whole problem Pacquiao has. Roach doesn’t usually come up with great plans. He seems to have Pacquiao on the attack mode 24/7 in terms of the game plans he designs for him, and that style of fighting only works on the guys that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has been consistently digging up for him to fight.
Arum has done well in finding guys like Rios, Margarito, a shot Mosley, and Algieri for Pacquiao to fight. Those were more or less easy marks for Pacquiao. But Mayweather is a whole different story.
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