By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is proud of his ability to make adjustments in the course of his fights during each and every round if needed. It’s his ability to make adjustments that has helped him go 47-0 as a pro, and rise to the top of the boxing world as the No.1 fighter pound-for-pound.
Mayweather doesn’t know if Pacquiao has the ability to make adjustments, and he sees the Filipino star as having a much different fighting style than his own. Mayweather says he fights with his brain by using his smarts, whereas Pacquiao is more reckless without thinking ahead like Mayweather does.
Mayweather sees himself as a chess play in thinking well ahead about the different moves he’s planning on making. Mayweather knows when an opponent is about to throw a punch, and this enables him to either get out of the way of the shot or nail his opponent with a punch before they get their punches off. Pacquiao likes to use a lot of feints, and that’s something that Mayweather doesn’t fall for.
”We’ll see what he brings to the table,” Mayweather said via AP at Yahoo Sports. ”Our styles are totally different. I fight with smarts. Every move is calculated. Every move is thought out. I’m always 5-10 steps ahead of my opponent. ‘I don’t know if he can make adjustments. I’m able to make adjustments. He comes at different angles so we’ll have to see. But he’s facing a solid, strong welterweight.”
Mayweather sees Pacquiao as a fighter who basically fights in the same style every time he fights. There aren’t any real adjustments with Pacquiao. If his plan-A doesn’t work, as we saw in his four fights with Juan Manuel Marquez, he’s kind of out of luck and is dependent on the judging to win based on activity rather than on clean-landing shots. If Pacquiao’s normal fighting style doesn’t work against Mayweather in their fight on May 2nd, then it’s going to put Pacquiao in a situation where he’s going to have to hope that the judges give him rounds based on him throwing more punches. Mayweather has a way of making his opponents miss badly, so we could expect to see Pacquiao’s connect percentage to be quite low. The only of getting around that is for Pacquiao to simply throw a massive amount of shots to win rounds based on his overall activity rather than on his connect percentage and cleaner landing shots.
Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has for years preached the idea that the way to beat Mayweather was for Pacquiao to apply constant pressure and throw tons of shots to overwhelm his Philly shell defense. I don’t know that Mayweather will be standing still to use the Philly shell much in this fight on May 2nd because it sounds like he plans on taking the fight to Pacquiao and taking the lead in activity. If Roach is assuming that Mayweather is going to fight Pacquiao like he did against Robert Guerrero, Miguel Cotto and in his first fight against Marcos Maidana, then Pacquiao could be lost when Mayweather comes out on the attack on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach says he and Pacquiao are ready for anything that Mayweather can do, and that he hopes that he’ll come out looking to mix it up. I don’t think Roach and Pacquiao will be ready for an aggressive Mayweather who is walking him down each round.
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