De La Hoya: Mayweather and Pacquiao have equal power

By Boxing News - 12/26/2014 - Comments

delahoya7777By Chris Williams: While Manny Pacquiao has been known to be a puncher with excellent power over the years, Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya refutes that notion.

De La Hoya says that Pacquiao hits no harder than Floyd Mayweather Jr, who isn’t thought of as a big puncher by anyone. Mayweather is someone that picked up a lot of knockouts earlier in his career in the lighter weights at super featherweight before he moved up in weight to welterweight.

Pacquiao is kind of in the same boat in that regard. Pacquiao picked up a ton of knockouts in the lighter weight classes, but since he moved up to welterweight, his knockouts have dried up after he initially stopped De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto. Pacquiao’s fight against Ricky Hatton was at light welterweight, so it doesn’t count as far as what Pacquiao has done at welterweight. Pacquiao’s power has had little effect on the welterweights in the past four years, and that doesn’t seem to be changing as he gets older.

“I have to say they’re [Pacquiao and Mayweather] are about the same [in punching power],” De La Hoya said via esnewsreporting.com. “I didn’t feel Pacquiao’s punch. It didn’t do anything to me. So I really didn’t feel his punch. With him it was more of the accumulation of punches. So they’re about the same. Pacquiao has the ability to knock you out, but he has to land the perfect punch. Pacquiao doesn’t have the good timing like Mayweather. Mayweather is a guy who will time you. He’ll throw one fast shot. He’s not a guy who will throw combinations. He’s not that type of fighter. Pac is. He’s throw 3-4-5 and 7 punches fast. They’re both about the same. Both guys have slowed down a bit.”

The only difference between Mayweather and Pacquiao, as De La Hoya stated, is that Pacquiao throws more combinations than Mayweather. This, of course, leads to Pacquiao getting hit much more frequently than him. That might be one of the reasons why Pacquiao seems to have lost more from his game than Mayweather in the last four years.

With Pacquiao fighting all these wars with the likes of Miguel Cotto, Juan Manuel Marquez, Tim Bradley, Antonio Margarito and Joshua Clottey, it likely has worn him down to where he’s not nearly the same fighter that he once was earlier in his career when he was fighting in the lighter divisions. The knockouts have totally disappeared for Pacquiao, and he’s no longer facing high quality opposition beyond Tim Bradley, who can’t punch.



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