By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya believes that today’s selection of referee Kenny Bayless will work in Floyd Mayweather Jr’s favor in his fight against Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd. De La Hoya notes that Bayless sometimes broke up the action in Mayweather’s second fight against Marcos Maidana when the Argentinian attempted to work in close last September.

De La Hoya feels this favored Mayweather by having the action reset to center ring where he could use distance and movement to get the better of the hard hitting Maidana.

I don’t recall Bayless stopping the action much when Maidana was in close in the second fight with Mayweather. The only time I saw Bayless separate the two of them is when Mayweather tied Maidana up in a clinch. At that point Bayless had to separate the two fighters in order to let the action resume because Mayweather was tying up Maidana and there was nothing he could do about it.

“I think it favors Mayweather, absolutely,” De La Hoya told Yahoo Sports. “There is no secret about that. I had heard Kenny Bayless was going to be the referee and that’s one point for Mayweather right there. If you notice every fight Mayweather has had with Kenny Bayless, the referee should break them up if both hands are tied up and they’re not throwing punches.”

I think De La Hoya is really reaching with him thinking that Bayless is favoring Mayweather. I think Bayless was just doing his job by breaking the two fighters apart on the inside because he couldn’t just let Mayweather and Maidana stand there in a clinch without breaking them apart. It doesn’t make sense.

“If you notice, for instance with Maidana, when they got in close, right away Kenny Bayless would break them up,” De La Hoya said. “One hand would be free from the clinch but [he still broke them up]. It’s an advantage for Mayweather.”

Maidana was roughing Mayweather up on the inside a lot in the first fight, and leaning on him to keep him pinned to the ropes. Bayless might have been making sure that kind of thing didn’t happen again because the first fight really got out of hand with the roughhouse tactics Maidana was using.

The referee that worked the first Mayweather-Maidana fight, Tony Weeks, had a real hands off approach to working the fight, and he wasn’t calling the falls that Maidana made. This made it difficult for Mayweather to operate in the fight because he was fighting a guy that was making the fight into an MMA type of bout.

When you’ve got one fighter fighting under the rules of boxing, and the other using boxing and MMA type roughhouse stuff, it’s going to give the boxing/MMA guy more of an advantage than the other guy who is merely fighting under the riles of boxing.

I think neither guy has the advantage with Bayless as the referee. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach and promoter Bob Arum both like Bayless and think he’s a good referee.