Pacquiao: Mayweather can’t handle it if you throw a lot of punches at him

By Chris Williams: Earlier today, Manny Pacquiao seemed to be speaking from the playbook that his trainer Freddie Roach has put together with his belief that the way to defeat Floyd Mayweather Jr. is by throwing a huge number of shots that he can’t hope to defend against.

Pacquiao told ESPN “Mayweather can’t handle it if you throw a lot of punches. That’s one of the strategies I’m going to use if the fight happens.”

That fight won’t happen if Pacquiao doesn’t win his next fight against Juan Manuel Marquez on December 8th. The fight also has little chances of happening even if Pacquiao wins the fight unless he can convince his promoter Bob Arum to accept less than a 50-50 purse split. Although Pacquiao revealed in the same interview that he’d be willing to accept a 45/55 split with Mayweather, it’s unclear whether his promoter Bob Arum would be able to agree to that. That’s the whole key. If Arum doesn’t agree, we can pretty much forget all about a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight even if Pacquiao beats Marquez in December.

As far as Pacquiao’s strategy to try and overwhelm Mayweather with punches in order to beat him, I think that’s something that would lead to Pacquiao getting knocked out or knocked down two or three times. That kind of scatter gun approach may work for Pacquiao against overmatched Top Rank stable fodder like Joshua Clottey and Antonio Margarito, because those guys don’t have the skills that Mayweather possesses. But if Pacquiao tries that primitive 1950s style of fighting against Mayweather it’ll end in disaster for the Filipino. His Freddie Roach may have to step in and throw the white towel of surrender to save Pacquiao from the beating that Mayweather will give him.

There really isn’t a blue print that you can follow to defeat Mayweather, because he makes adjustments on the fly is able to counter any plan that Roach could come up with to try and beat him. I’m sure Pacquiao will have a plan A, B, C and D, and I’m also fairly certain that Mayweather would be able to stop each plan with ease.