By Dan Ambrose: While there’s plenty of reasons for Manny Pacquiao to be worried about tonight’s big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Las Vegas, Nevada, Pacquiao says he’s not worried.
In fact, he says he was more worried about his 2008 fight against Oscar De La Hoya than he is against Mayweather tonight. As we all discovered, Pacquiao had no reasons to be worried about the De La Hoya fight because De La Hoya looked both weight drained and shot as a fighter in that fight after going on a whack diet to drain down to 147.
Pacquiao ended up easily stopping De La Hoya. Tonight, Pacquiao won’t be fighting a weight-drained Mayweather so it’s going to be a much different type of fight.
“I’m not worried about my opponent now,” Pacquiao said via ESPN. “I was more worried about the De La Hoya fight.
Mayweather is hoping to take the fight to Pacquiao and get him out of there with a KO if the opportunity arises for him. Pacquiao says he hopes Mayweather will choose to battle him in the trenches tonight because he feels that this will enable them to entertain the boxing fans better.
Pacquiao doesn’t care if things go badly for him. He just wants to entertain the fans any way possible. The best way of making that a reality is for Mayweather to meet him in the center of the ring and throw down with him with his best power shots from start to the bloody finish.
“If he [Mayweather] runs, maybe Manny won’t win by knockout, but if he doesn’t [run], there’s a good chance Manny will,” Roach told Philboxing.com. “Whatever Mayweather decides to do, we’ll be ready. We’ll win this fight.”
Roach’s confidence is normal for him, as he constantly sees nothing but a rosy picture for Pacquiao in each and every fight he takes. But doesn’t always work out for Roach and Pacquiao as we saw in his fourth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. Going into that fight, Roach had predicted a knockout win for Pacquiao. He felt that Pacquiao would KO Marquez early in the fight. But what ultimately happened was Marquez being the one that scored the knockout when he stopped Pacquiao in the 6th round courtesy of a right hand to the head.
Fight fans will be paying from $89.99 to $99.99 to see the fight on pay-per-view in the United States. They want to see a lot of action for their money. That’s why there will be pressure on both guys to make sure they mix it up as much as possible because the last thing they need to do is burn bridges with the casual boxing fans of the sport who will be the main people that buy tonight’s card.
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