By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach may have tipped his hand by giving a big hint about what Manny Pacquiao will do in his next fight with Antonio Margarito by saying “Manny will start fast with this guy, and we will finish him fast,” in an interview with the Telegraph.co.uk. In other words, Roach is going to have Pacquiao bum rush Margarito like he did Joshua Clottey, stand in front of him and try to overwhelm him with over 100 punches per round. It didn’t work against Clottey, though, because he blocked most of Pacquiao’s shots and the ones that got through had no effect on him.

Pacquiao ended up throwing over 1200 punches over the course of the 12 round bout, but he was just throwing them without aiming and not loading up on them. If Pacquiao fights this way against Margarito, he may be playing into Margarito’s major strength. He’s very good at throwing a massive amount of punches per round, and more than capable of throwing 100 punches per round over a 12 round bout. The difference here is that Margarito is still able to aim his shots and throw with a lot of power.

He may not be the fastest of fighters, but he hits harder and actually aims his shots when he’s focusing on high volume punching. My guess is Roach thinks that Pacquiao will be able to duplicate what Shane Mosley did in his fight with Margarito, and that’s why Roach is talking about Pacquiao starting off fast and finishing fast. He must think that Pacquiao can overwhelm Margarito with a massive amount of shots. I don’t think it’s going to work.

Mosley didn’t just stand in front of Margarito trying to gun him down with ton of punches. What Mosley did was attack in brief two and three punch spurts. In between those brief bursts, he did a lot of clinching to keep Margarito from being able to throw punches. When he wasn’t clinching, Mosley was moving around on the outside. I don’t think Pacquiao will do any clinching with Margarito, because that’s not part of Pacquiao’s game. Even if Roach tried to train Pacquiao to smother Margarito with clinching, I don’t think he would follow that game plan.

The only way that Pacquiao can beat Margarito is to go toe-to-toe with him, and if he does try and throw a massive of punches like he did against Clottey, I think Margarito is going to beat Pacquiao up and stop him. We already saw what Clottey was able to do to Pacquiao in just throwing 15 to 20 punches per round. Can you imagine Margarito, a bigger puncher than Clottey, throwing 5 X that many per round? Pacquiao will get riddled to pieces. Roach better hope that Pacquiao can get Margarito out of there as fast as possible, because there may not be anything left of him if this bout goes 10 rounds or more.