By Chris Williams: If you look at the fight between Shane Mosley (46-6-1, 39 KO’s) and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May of 2010, you’ll notice that Mosley started off well, throwing hard shots and hurting Mayweather in the 2nd round, but then quickly froze up after seeing how fast Mayweather was and how he made Mosley pay when he would land his shots. Now we’re looking at Mosley fighting a more primitive and wide open fighter on defense in 32-year-old Manny Pacquiao (52-3-2, 38 KO’s).

Mosley is going to have plenty of opportunities to land his shots in their fight on May 7th, but he’s also going to get hit back just as he was in the Mayweather fight. The question is whether Mosley will be willing to take these shots to throw his harder blows and hope to either knock Pacquiao out or possibly cut Pacquiao with one of the shots.

Pacquao isn’t as good at countering as Mayweather and he’s also not as precise of a puncher. Pacquiao likes to slug without thinking when hit, and unless he’s getting feedback in between rounds that he’s actually following, Pacquiao can really screw things up during a round by going all out and trying to slug instead of keeping his distance and using movement.

In his fight with Antonio Margarito, Pacquiao was hurt with a body shot in the 6th. In between rounds, Roach had Pacquiao make some adjustments for the next round and Pacquiao did a good job of following the instructions to the letter by moving and keeping away from Margarito. It worked well, but then again Margarito was as slow as molasses and this approach would have worked for any fighter that could move without gassing out. Pacquiao can’t use that approach against Mosley long terms because Mosley will close the distance quickly and catch Pacquiao with right hands. Mosley will win rounds this way. Pacquiao has to fight him and try to wear him down if he wants to get the win.