By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) may opt to run from him on May 2nd rather than stand and fight at the center of the ring where he would like it to take place. Pacquiao wants an old fashioned slugfest when he gets inside the ring with Mayweather at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

If Mayweather elects to use mobility to out-box the Filipino star, then Pacquiao hints that he’ll be able to force him into a fight.

“Run, run,” Pacquiao told esnewsreporting.com about Mayweather. “You can run but you can’t hide.”

I think Pacquiao might be surprised in how Mayweather chooses to fight him. Mayweather never runs from anyone, so it’s hard to understand what Pacquiao is referring to.

Mayweather uses movement sparingly in his fights. Most of the time he stays in the pocket and gets the better of his opposition. In his fights against Miguel Cotto and Marcos Maidana, Mayweather used movement in those fights some of the time due to him facing guys that were naturally bigger than him.

Marquez had a 15 pound weight advantage in his first fight with Mayweather; whereas Cotto out-weighed Mayweather by close to 10 pounds in their fight in 2012. Even in those fights, Mayweather still spent most of the time in the pocket and was still able to get the better of them.

Mayweather’s new strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza is reportedly adding more strength to Mayweather’s punches, and he’s got him sitting down on his shots a lot more now than he ever has before. This is going to be a completely different Mayweather that enters the ring against the 36-year-old Filipino star on May 2nd, and I’m not sure that Pacquiao is going to be ready for what he’ll be facing in that fight.

Mayweather is going to be catching Pacquiao on the way in, on the way out, and in between many of the shots he throws in the fight. This means that Pacquiao is going to be getting hit a lot more often with harder shots than he’s been hit in the last six years. The last time that Pacquiao fought a puncher was in 2010 in his fight against Antonio Margarito, and he really wasn’t a puncher by that point in his career.

The last real puncher that Pacquiao went up against was a weight drained Miguel Cotto in 2009. That was a catch-weight handicap fight for Pacquiao with it taking place at 145 pounds instead of at the full weight for the welterweight division. Pacquiao didn’t face Cotto at 154, so he really didn’t experience the power that Cotto has now. Pacquiao had a handicap against Cotto, Mayweather did not. He fought him at the full weight of the junior middleweight division, and that’s something you have to give Mayweather respect for doing. He didn’t push for an advantage with the weights, even though he could have given his popularity.

Other than Cotto, Pacquiao really hasn’t faced any punchers in the last six years. You can bet that Mayweather is going to be hitting Pacquiao a lot more in this fight than Pacquiao has been hit in many years, perhaps more than he ever has in his entire career. Because of that we may see a knockout in this fight if Mayweather connects with enough shots to finish Pacquiao off.

Pacquiao can take a decent shot, but he doesn’t have the greatest chin in the welterweight division, and he’s clearly vulnerable to body shots. I believe that if Mayweather hits Pacquiao enough times in this fight, we’re going to see Pacquiao get knocked out, because he’s just not used to getting hit as often as he will be on May 2nd.