Pacquiao will need a plan-B for Mayweather, says Malignaggi

By Boxing News - 04/30/2015 - Comments

1-LR_MAYPAC-TRAPPFOTOS-FINAL PRESSER-9963By Chris Williams: If WBO 147lb champion Manny Pacquiao hopes to pull off an upset against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. this Saturday night, Pacquiao is going to need to become multi-dimensional and come up with a good backup plan if his first plan gets quickly solved by Mayweather Jr, says Malignaggi.

The knock on Pacquiao is he’s never shown any ability to fight using different game plans. He’s a guy that totally one-dimensional and always has been since he first turned pro 20 years ago in 1995.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is always talking about having great game plans for Pacquiao, but each time Pacquiao fights, he always uses the same game plan. So it’s other Roach just talking or Pacquiao simply not able to mentally grasp the concepts that Roach has been trying to teach him all these years. For a person to be successful in any profession, they need to absorb the teaching from their instructors, and then put it altogether

“Many people think he [Pacquiao] is one-dimensional,” Malignaggi said via Skysports.com. “Something has to keep Mayweather on edge or within two, certainly three rounds, he will get in the zone and those last eight or nine rounds will be very, very difficult for Manny to do anything. It will get worse and worse for him.” Malignaggi said.

Malignaggi’s point about Pacquiao needing to start fast has been echoed by a lot of people in the boxing industry. They feel that if Pacquiao is going to have any chance in this fight, it’s going to be by him starting out fast and building up a small lead over Mayweather going into the second half of the fight. The idea is that if Mayweather falls behind in the fight, it’ll force him to fight Pacquiao’s fight by making him get in the trenches and slug with the Filipino fighter the way that he and his trainer Freddie Roach want him to.

I don’t know if that will ultimately play out as well as Pacquiao and Roach think it will, because Mayweather might prove to be the better man in a slugfest with Pacquiao. After all, Mayweather is bigger than Pacquiao and he punches almost as hard as him if not harder. If Mayweather can avoid Pacquiao’s head shots, he’ll get the better of Pacquiao during the exchanges between them.

“If he [Pacquiao] can’t [adapt into a plan-B], then he will be shown up as the one-dimensional fighter that a lot of people say he is,” Malignaggi said. “I know Floyd has made levels of adjustment, but Manny hasn’t really shown that and needs to adjust if he’s going to have success in this one.”

Asking Pacquiao to make adjustments is probably asking too much of him. As I pointed out, Pacquiao has never shown the ability to make any adjustments in any one fight that he’s had. He’s always been a slugger, and his in and out fighting style is the same style he’s used from day one when he first turned pro. If Roach is taking credit for having taught Pacquiao his fighting style than he’s kidding himself, because if you look at the earliest fights for Pacquiao, he was fighting in the same style as he does now, and this was way, way before Pacquiao started bring trained by Roach.



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