By Chris Williams: In what is unusual behavior by Manny Pacquiao, he failed to give any credit to his opponent during today’s press conference for their mega- fight on May 2nd. Instead of building Mayweather up by saying a few nice things about him, Pacquiao took a shot at him by saying that he’s had tougher fights than this against Miguel Cotto, Oscar De La Hoya and Antonio Margarito.
What’s interesting about those fights is that Margarito and Cotto agreed to fight Pacquiao at a catch-weight, which arguably left both fighters at least than 100 percent given the weight they had to take off.
With De La Hoya, it was even worse because he had to come down from 154, a weight he was barely making at that point in his career. De La Hoya drained down to 147 to fight Pacquiao, and ended up too weak to fight.
How Pacquiao can say that these three weight-drained fighters were tougher than Mayweather is beyond me. Those were three fights where Pacquiao for all intents and purposes had a catch-weight handicap working for him.
“I don’t anticipate this being the hardest fight,” Pacquiao said via ESPN.com. “That would be Miguel Cotto, [Oscar] De La Hoya and [Antonio] Margarito. I knew De La Hoya was fast, and I was moving up two weight classes [to fight him]. And Cotto I knew was a very hard puncher. And Margarito hit very hard and was much bigger than me. I don’t see that in Floyd Mayweather. I don’t see any of that.”
De La Hoya was weight drained and well past his prime at the time he fought Pacquiao in 2008. That fight was the equivalent of De La Hoya fighting with one hand tied behind his back due to age, inactivity and having to come down to 147.
If Pacquiao thinks he fought a prime or even a near prime version of De La Hoya, then he’s really kidding himself. De La Hoya was pretty much a shot fighter at that point in his career, and the weight class that he fought Pacquiao was all wrong. It would be like asking Pacquiao to melt down to 135 and fight someone like Terence Crawford right now. Pacquiao would be in really bad shape after taking that much weight off, and then having to fight a defensive fighter like Crawford.
Whether Pacquiao wants to admit it or not, Mayweather is a much more difficult opponent for him than Cotto, Margarito and De La Hoya; there’s no comparisons between them. Margarito had already been exposed recently by Shane Mosley a year before Pacquiao beat him, and Mosley did a better job of it by stopping Margarito in the 9th round. Pacquiao had to go the full 12 rounds with Margarito.
Pacquiao can keep saying that the Mayweather fight isn’t going to be the toughest one of his career, but he’s going to find out the hard way how wrong he is. But, of course, Pacquiao has already been beaten three times, so maybe this won’t be the toughest fight of his career.
Mayweather would have to try and top what the other five fighters did in beating Pacquiao. That could prove impossible for Mayweather unless he’s able to knock Pacquiao out before the 3rd round.
“He [Mayweather] has a good defense but I’m not worried about that. I can easily break that defense,” Pacquiao said.
Pacquiao went on to say that he hasn’t changed the game plan that they put together back in 2010 when they first tried to setup a fight against Mayweather. In other words, Pacquiao will be trying to use the same game plan that they put together years ago.
That game plan involves Pacquiao trying to overwhelm Mayweather with punches. It’s a strategy that works against stationary fighters, but it a total fail against guys that use movement and don’t stay in one place.
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