By Dave Lahr: Showtime boxing analyst Al Bernstein thinks that the proposed fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather will come down to how well the 31-year-old Pacquiao does in the first five rounds of the fight. In an interview at Examiner.com, Bernstein says “If Pacquiao fights him, Mayweather is likely going to hit him with a big right hand in the first five rounds. If Manny Pacquiao doesn’t go down or get badly hurt, Manny Pacquiao is either going to beat Floyd Mayweather or he is going to make it such an exciting, hellacious fight that we are going to be all happy.”
I disagree with Bernstein. I don’t think that Mayweather needs to hurt Pacquiao in the first five rounds in order to totally dominate the Filipino. And I don’t think Mayweather needs to depend on his right hand just to beat Pacquiao. He’ll do just fine with his left hand and I don’t see the fight coming down to whether Mayweather is landing his right hand or not to hurt Pacquiao. Of course Mayweather is going to be hitting Pacquiao with right hands, but he’s going to be hitting Pacquiao with pretty much the entire kitchen sink because Pacquiao will be bum rushing him like he does all his opponents, trying to overwhelm Mayweather with punches.
But the first five rounds are meaningless. Mayweather could sit back and do very little like he did against Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and then still come on in the second half of the fight to dominate and stop Pacquiao. The problem for Pacquiao is that he’s facing a much superior fighter with Mayweather than the ones that have been selected for him by his promotional company. The one good fighter that still had anything left, Juan Manuel Marquez, gave Pacquiao huge problems in two fights. But for some reason there hasn’t been much interest in putting Pacquiao back in with Marquez.
Mayweather totally dominated Marquez over 12 rounds, beating him by a wide decision. This kind of gives you a good indication of what Mayweather would do to Pacquiao if they were to fight. I doubt they will. Pacquiao probably won’t want to take the random blood testing that Mayweather wants and probably won’t take less than 50% of the revenue, even though Mayweather’s pay-per-view numbers have been better than Pacquiao as of late.
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