(Photo credit: Stephanie Trapp/Mayweather Promotions) By Chris Williams: Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is totally convinced that Manny Pacquiao is going to give Floyd Mayweather Jr a great deal of problems in their fight on May 2nd. Tyson thinks Mayweather is going to get hurt in this fight more than he ever has before in any of his fights.
Tyson also believes that Mayweather is going to be perplexed in how to deal with the 36-year-old Pacquiao.
This of course is a good thing that Tyson is underestimating Mayweather, because it’ll give Mayweather a chance to show Tyson another side of his game that he hasn’t seen before. Pacquiao’s fighting style seems to have Tyson impressed and feeling that he’s nearly impossible to beat, but Mayweather is going to attempt to show Tyson how you defuse Pacquiao and turn him into a harmless smaller fighter who is out of his league in this fight.
“You need to put constant pressure on Floyd,” Tyson said via wsj.com. “Be in front of him all the time, but moving side to side and punching from angles. Manny is going to feint Floyd out of position a lot and make him throw more punches than he is used to, and that will open Floyd up.”
It sounds like Tyson seems to think that Mayweather is going to come into the May 2nd fight against Pacquiao using the same game plan that he used in his first fight against Marcos Maidana last year.
If Mayweather were to just stand in the pocket for 12 rounds against Pacquiao, then I can understand Pacquiao being able to put a lot of pressure on Mayweather to force him to match him punch for punch. But I don’t see Mayweather fighting this way against Pacquiao.
Tyson needs to go back and watch Mayweather’s recent fight against Marcos Maidana, and the last three rounds of his fight against Miguel Cotto to realize how Mayweather is going to fight against Pacquiao.
Mayweather is going to use movement, speed and his much longer reach to stab Pacquiao at will with jabs and clean right hands all night long. Pacquiao can feint all he likes, but he’s not going to be able to get out of the way of Mayweather’s jabs in this fight.
Once Mayweather starts nailing Pacquiao with a lot of jabs, he’s going to come behind them with right hands and left hooks. If the slower fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley were able to land a lot of their shots on Pacquiao, then a blazing fast fighter like Mayweather is going to have little problems landing his own speedy shots.
“He has never really been tested,” Tyson said. “Whatever happens in this fight, I really think that Floyd is going to be hit and hurt more than he has ever been before. We’re going to see how tough he is.”
Mayweather has never been tested? What about Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Maidana, Cotto, Marquez, Diego Corrales, Jose Luis Castillo and Zab Judah? Mayweather has been tested countless times during his long career. The thing is he’s always been able to pass the test each time.
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