Penalosa: Pacquiao will have no problems beating Mayweather

By Boxing News - 04/19/2015 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: Former two division world champion Gerry Penalosa witnessed a recent sparring session of Filipino star Manny Pacquiao as he went about his business preparing for his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on 5/2.

Penalosa came away from the experience very impressed with what he saw of Pacquiao. He felt that he did such a great job during his sparring session that surely he beat Mayweather in their big mega-fight.

Unfortunately, Penalosa didn’t witness one of Mayweather’s sparring session because then he would have something to compare to Pacquiao’s recent session. Pacquiao is said to have gotten the better of two of his sparring partners, who are unknown to this writer.

Sparring is much different than actual fighting as most people know. So it doesn’t really tell a fighter anything when he gets the better of his sparring partners because their sparring partners are not world champions like Mayweather is, and they don’t have the same kind of talent that he does. Believe me, if they did have Mayweather’s talent, they would be champions too and not sparring partners.

“What I saw was a perfect 12-round sparring session,” Penalosa said via Philboxing.com. “He was so quick with both his hands and feet. Perfect, very smooth. This early, I believe there’s no problem beating Mayweather…Manny will beat him black and blue. I can see Mayweather suffering his first defeat in his professional career,” Penalosa said.

That’s a pretty bold prediction that Penalosa has made. So he’s going to beat Mayweather “black and blue”? If that’s the case then why didn’t Pacquiao do that to his last opponent Chris Algieri, and his opponent before that Tim Bradley? The fact of the matter is that Pacquiao doesn’t stand in the pocket long enough anymore to beat his opponents black and blue. He’s always so quick to get away in order to escape punishment, and this keeps him from being able to land his shots.

If Pacquiao can’t stay in the pocket against Mayweather then this fight is going to be a very easy one for Mayweather because he’ll use his longer reach to dominate the action from the outside against the shorter-armed Pacquiao.

“Manny may not be able to knock him out cold, but just the same the fight might not last the 12-round route,” Penalosa said. “The ref might intervene and stop the fight.”

Penalosa seems to think this fight is going to play out a lot like the Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya in 2008. The main difference between De La Hoya and Mayweather is that De La Hoya was totally shot and weight drained in that fight after foolishly agreeing to fight at 147 rather than dragging the less popular but smaller Pacquiao up to 154 to fight him at that weight.

De La Hoya certainly had the clout to get Pacquiao to move up in weight to fight him at 154. It was one of the rare instances where a less popular fighter got his way in the negotiations over the guy who had all the pull and could have stood firm to force Pacquiao to come up in weight rather than De La Hoya coming down in weight.

If Pacquiao does try and force Mayweather into a war on May 2nd, I see Mayweather turning into a shark and tearing up the smaller Pacquiao. I hope for Pacquiao’s sake he tries to use his boxing skills rather than him rushing forward and trying to slug with Mayweather out. Mayweather is going to be ready for any trick that Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach try to use in this fight.



Comments are closed.