By Jeff Aronow: Manny Pacquiao is looking impressive in his workouts training for his title fight against IBF/WBC welterweight champion Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence Jr on August 21st in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Spence (27-0, 21 KOs) is assuming the win is already in the bag, he needs to look at some of the training videos of the 42-year-old Pacquiao.
The Filipino star looking like a fighter ten years younger than his chronological age, and his speed is like no one else at any age.
Pacquiao is a live dog in this fight, and he may pull off an upset if Spence cannot raise his game to another level.
What we saw of Spence in his slow, plodding victory over Danny Garcia last December won’t be good enough for him to beat Pacquiao in the form that he’s showing in his workouts.
Pacquiao’s trainer Boo Boy needs to drop a few pounds because he looks too heavy to be holding the mitts for the star. Hopefully, Manny isn’t being short-changed with his mitt workouts due to his trainer’s weight issues.
Manny’s hand and foot speed will give Spence a lot of trouble in this fight because Errol hasn’t fought like that.
The closest that Spence has come to fighting a fast guy with a small size was his match against Leonard Bundu in 2016. Spence had problems with Bundu early in the fight until he caught him with a big uppercut in the sixth.
Bundu was nowhere near as quick as Pacquiao, and he didn’t have power either. Nonetheless, Spence was troubled by Bundu, and he didn’t look comfortable at any point in the fight until he caught him with a big shot in the sixth.
Spence, 5’9 1/2″, will try and use his jab to keep Pacquiao bottled up on the outside the way he did against Mikey Garcia in their fight in 2019.
That would work if Pacquiao were someone that would be marching forward looking to land his shots.
But with Pacquiao’s side-to-side movement, he will be attacking Spence from different angles, which will negate his jab.
If Pacquiao attacks Spence in waves, hitting him with quick combinations and then getting away, this could be a mismatch.
Spence isn’t going to be able to take that kind of punishment without breaking down the way some of Pacquiao’s other opponents have.
Oscar De La Hoya is a good example. De La Hoya was about the same size as Spence with slightly faster hand speed, and he was unable to keep Pacquiao from getting in range, nailing him with shots, and then starting away.
There was too much speed from Pacquiao for De La Hoya to keep up with him. We could see the same thing happen with Spence. This is a terrible style match-up for Spence.