By Jason Kim: Former IBF welterweight champion Joshua Clottey has always been known as a tough fighter because of his power, speed and his ability to rough up his opponents during the course of a bout. However, as good as Clottey is, he’s limited in that he fights in spurts, and spends a lot of time covering up or laying on the ropes. Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao, has noticed Clottey’s many flaws and has pointed them out. If Clottey is to beat Pacquiao, he’s going to have to spend more time throwing punches and less time focusing on defense.

Clottey has been saying that he’s going to wear Pacquiao down by blocking his shots all night long, but Pacquiao won’t just stand and throw without stop. Manny is going to fight in short attacks where he jumps in and lands and then moves out of range. Roach says that he’s going to have Pacquiao overwhelm Clottey with punches, but that’s not likely what Pacquiao will try to do.

He’s going to throw and move to the outside. The way that Pacquiao will attack hard for a sustained period of time is if he can hurt Clottey and have him feeling like Miguel Cotto was in his 12th round knockout loss to Pacquiao in November. Pacquiao fought in short attacks against Cotto until he had him hurt and running. Once that happened, Pacquiao began attacking Cotto with more and more punches without letting up.

Clottey has to make sure he’s not just covering up and looking to wait until Pacquiao stops punching. That won’t work for him, and Roach even knows it won’t. Pacquiao will back away once he’s landed his shots, so that when Clottey comes out of his clamshell defense to try and throw some shots, Pacquiao won’t be there for him.

If Clottey is to land at all, he needs to be punching while he’s under attack by Pacquiao. He’s got to try and counter punch or at the very least, just throw punches when Pacquiao is throwing. It could end up as a brawl, but I feel that Clottey stands a much better chance of fighting like this than he will if he just covers up for long periods of time while Pacquiao lambasts him with shots.

Roach knows how to get around Clottey’s high guard by having Pacquiao hook all the way around it to get to the side of Clottey’s head which he doesn’t do quite a good job of covering up. Clottey could end up as mincemeat if he sticks to just covering up like that, because it appears that Pacquiao, with Roach’s training, knows how to get around Clottey’s guard to land.

That tells me that it’s a waste of effort for Clottey to even bother with his defensive focus. He needs to do something completely different for this fight by going on the attack and trying to use his size and strength to impose his will on the smaller Pacquiao. Clottey could actually discover that he’s a lot stronger than Pacquiao in the process if he goes after him. Clottey has been fighting bigger welterweights during his career, and by fighting Pacquiao, who at best will be 147 come fight night, Clottey will be facing a smaller guy than what he’s become accustomed to fighting.