By Dan Ambrose: With the mega-fight between superstars Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao fast approach, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is feeling very confident about Pacquiao’s chances to win the fight based on how good his condition is for the May 2nd fight.
Roach feels that Pacquiao won’t have any stamina issues in the fight with Mayweather. He thinks that Pacquiao will be able to fight hard for three minutes of every round for the full 12 rounds.
In Pacquiao’s two fights against Tim Bradley and his 2011 fight against Juan Manuel Marquez, he looked tired in the last three rounds of those fights. Roach doesn’t say what happened in those fights.
“He is in top condition. Manny is a freak. He runs, and his condition,” Roach said via espn.co.uk. “We don’t have to worry about that. He’ll never lose a fight because he’s too tired. It just doesn’t happen. It’s impossible.”
Anything is possible in a fight. All it takes if Pacquiao to lose a smaller percentage of his stamina against Mayweather in the later rounds and that’ll be enough for him to possibly lose the fight if it’s close.
At the end of the day, it’s doubtful that the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight will be decided on the conditioning factor. It’s going to likely be decided on the talent and fight strategy of the two fighters. If Mayweather is simply the better fighter than Pacquiao, conditioning won’t save the day for Pacquiao.
On the flip-side, if Mayweather can’t deal with Pacquiao’s high work rate and constant movement, then he’ll lose the fight. The loss won’t be due to the conditioning of Mayweather because he’s going to be in the best possible condition he can be in for the fight. By now, Mayweather probably has a pretty good idea whether he’ll be able to handle Pacquiao’s style of fighting. With all the sparring partners that Mayweather has mimicking Pacquiao’s fighting style; Mayweather will know how to defeat Pacquiao’s movement, speed and high work rate.
If Mayweather can’t do the job against the real thing then he’s going to taste defeat on May 2nd. But I think that both fighters have an idea of how they’re going to do in the fight. Pacquiao has two sparring partners who are said to be very similar to Mayweather in their fighting style. Roach was unhappy recently with the way that Pacquiao cut off the ring against his sparring partners. Whether it was those particular sparring partners is unknown. It’s not a good sign for Pacquiao though if he’s not doing well against the guys that Roach has brought in for the sparring.
Roach needs to come up with some good plans for Pacquiao to use for the fight. The conditioning has always been there for Pacquiao, but his game plan has been his weakness in his fights against Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley. If Pacquiao is struggling against those guys, then it makes sense to conclude that he’s going to have more than he can deal with against a guy much better than those fighters in Mayweather.
With Mayweather the defensive fighter, he has the real advantage in this fight. He’s facing an opponent in the 36-year-old Pacquiao who is a very aggressive offensive-oriented fighter. Pacquiao takes a lot of risks in order to please his fans, and this leaves him open to getting hit a lot. The problem is that Pacquiao is facing a classical counter puncher with skills that he’s never seen before during his career. We saw pretty clearly that Pacquiao struggled with the counter punching from Marquez in their two fights. It could be much worse against Mayweather if Pacquiao leaves himself open by fighting too aggressively.