Mosley: Mayweather’s legs are good enough to evade Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 04/16/2015 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has been repeating himself endlessly about Floyd Mayweather Jr’s legs being slower than they previously were, and that he’s now forced to trade shots with his opponents at this point in his career.

Roach thinks that Mayweather’s old legs won’t be able to carry him around the ring enough on May 2nd to elude Pacquiao’s incessant in and out attacks in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Former Mayweather victim Shane Mosley doesn’t see there being any problems with Mayweather’s legs. He’s noticed that’s slower, but he still feels that Mayweather can move enough to elude Pacquiao for 12 rounds.

“Looking at him work in the gym and hit the bag, it doesn’t look like his legs are the same but they are good enough to evade Pacquiao,” Mosley said via Skysports.com.

Mayweather’s legs obviously aren’t what they were 10 years ago, but I think he’s close enough to where he once was for him to still give Pacquiao a ton of problems. What made Mayweather so elusive in the past wasn’t just the speed of his legs. It was the intelligence that he used to move in exactly the right direction to avoid getting hit by his opponents. He was definitely fast on his feet, but what made him so difficult to hit was the decision making that he made to move out of range of his opponents by shifting left or right to get away.

In watching Mayweather’s last fight against Marcos Maidana last September, Mayweather showed the same ring intelligence that he had earlier in his career, and his feet were more than fast enough to get out of the way of Maidana.

“On May 2 it will be all Floyd – but I’m still not sure because I know Pacquiao has punching power,” Mosley said. “He has a sneaky left hand that, if Floyd gets too confident which he could, he could get caught. It’s like he doesn’t throw it at all until you find yourself on the canvas.”

It’s going to take more than one single shot for Pacquiao to finish Mayweather off. If he hurts him with a left hand that puts Mayweather down on the canvas, which is unlikely, Pacquiao is going to need to throw a lot more punches for him to keep him there.

Since Mayweather is so good at eluding punches, it’s going to be all but impossible for Pacquiao to connect with another shot that will put him down for the 10 count. Mayweather’s elusiveness is going to result in Pacquiao missing a lot of his punches, and this is going to cause him to take some of the power off his shots in order to land his punches.

Pacquiao’s secret game plan for the fight has got to be something along the lines of him pressuring Mayweather. I can’t believe for a second that Pacquiao and Roach are keying too much on him being able to land his left hand shots over the shoulder roll of Mayweather to take advantage of him possibly leaning towards Pacquiao’s left hand.



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