By Dan Ambrose: 39-year-old Shane Mosley is prepared to go the full 12 rounds to pound out a decision against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao if the Filipino star decides to box him instead of going right at Mosley to try and slug it out.

Mosley’s trainer Nazim Richardson thinks that Pacquiao could do something unexpected like deciding to use a lot of movement against Mosley rather than opting to fight toe-to-toe like he’s done against some of his over-matched opponents recently, according to fightnews.com.

Richardson may be on to something, as Pacquiao used movement against his last opponent Antonio Margarito when he couldn’t handle the heat from Margarito in the 6th round.

Although Pacquiao was able to come back and spent good portions of the remainder of the fight slugging with Margarito, he was able to get away with this because of how slow Margarito’s hand speed was.

Against Mosley, who will probably be the fastest fighter that Pacquiao has ever fought, he’s going to get hit a lot if he decides to go right at Mosley to try and make the fight exciting like he’s been talking about.

Richardson says he has a plan for Mosley to handle Pacquiao’s in and out attacks. It’s likely going to involve cutting off the ring and going after him to put pressure on him the way that Juan Manuel Marquez was able to do in his two fights. Mosley is an excellent counter puncher and could find a lot of opportunities to land his shots against Pacquiao, especially if Pacquiao attempts to throw a lot of punches like he did in his fight with Joshua Clottey.

Pacquiao threw over 1000 punches against Clottey. However, he has basically had a punching bag in front of him all night because Clottey mostly just covered up and let Pacquiao throw shots.

Mosley won’t do that and will return fire. This is why we could see Pacquiao using a strategy devised by his trainer Freddie Roach where Pacquiao would use a lot of circular movement like Amir Khan does with occasional in and out attacks. Mosley will have to be good to cut off the ring against Pacquiao if he decides to fight that way.