By Chris Williams: Former heavyweight title challenger Gerry Cooney is picking WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. to top Manny Pacquiao in their mega-money unification fight on May 2nd. Cooney, 58, says he’s a big fan of Pacquiao, but he just doesn’t think he can win the fight due to the talent that Mayweather has going for him.

Cooney thinks that Pacquiao will need to put a ton of pressure on Mayweather for him to have a chance of winning. However, he still sees it as being difficult for Pacquiao because of the way that Mayweather is able to get his opponents fighting his type of fight and at his own pace.

“If Manny Pacquiao can do it, he can do it with this guy [trainer Freddie Roach],” Cooney said via Newsday.com. “But they have to put a lot of pressure on Mayweather, six through 12, and you can beat him, just like [Marcos] Maidana almost did.”

Putting pressure on Mayweather is something that his opponents have been trying his entire career, and it’s simply never worked. It is trick that has been tried and it’s always failed in the past. I don’t think it’s going to work this time around either.

Pressure only works when you’re facing someone that doesn’t have a clue in how to deal with it. Pacquiao’s last opponent Chris Algieri fought like he’d never faced a pressure fighter before in the Pacquiao fight, and that made Pacquiao’s job that much easier. But Mayweather does know how to deal with pressure, and I see him being able to elude Pacquiao when he goes on the attack.

“I’m a Manny Pacquiao fan, but I don’t think he can win,” Cooney said. “I think Mayweather is too good. I think that Mayweather has a way of lulling you to sleep and working that jab and he steals those last rounds and wins the fight.”

Cooney is right about Pacquiao needing to use pressure against Mayweather to have a chance in this fight, but I still don’t see it working out well for him.

Mayweather is going to have an easy time foiling Pacquiao’s pressure unless Pacquiao can somehow find the power that he previously possessed back between 2008 and 2009. The power disappeared in 2010, and it hasn’t been back since.

I don’t think it’s going to come down to Mayweather having to win the last remaining rounds for him to get the victory. For a fight like that, Mayweather would have to have struggled in the earlier rounds trying to figure out how to deal with Pacquiao’s game plan. But I don’t see that happening. I think Mayweather is going to figure out how to deal with Pacquiao’s game plan from the start, and be way ahead by the time the championship rounds start.

You have to remember that Pacquiao is the type of fighter that Mayweather has always done well against in the past. The lack of size and the style that Pacquiao has is going to put him at the mercy of Mayweather to where he can do whatever he wants in this fight.

The reason why Mayweather struggled against Marcos Maidana in their first fight was due in part to the size of 5’9”, 165 pound Maidana. Further, Mayweather gave Maidana a handicap in that fight by standing in the pocket most of the fight and allowing Maidana to have a stationary target. We saw in the rematch that Maidana couldn’t do anything when Mayweather used movement against him.

The movement is exactly what Mayweather will be using against Pacquiao on May 2nd, because he knows that Pacquiao doesn’t have the size or the skills to be able to deal with a guy that jabs and uses movement to keep out of the range of his shots.