By Chris Williams:
It’s increasingly clear that Manny Pacquiao’s game plan for the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight is to throw a ton of punches and hope that Mayweather can’t defend against them all when they get inside the ring on May 2nd.
The high punch volume attack is an idea that Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach dreamed up six years ago when he first started talking about which game plan would work against Mayweather. Now six years later boxing fans will get a chance to see for themselves whether Roach knows what he’s talking about or if he’s merely deluded like he was when he was Oscar De La Hoya’s trainer for the Mayweather fight in 2007. Roach’s game plan didn’t work in that fight, and it’s quite possible that his game plan will come up empty for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.
“I really don’t know,” Mayweather said via Mlive.com about what he thinks the 36-year-old Pacquiao will be trying to do against him on May 2nd. “I think my focus is always being in control and dictating the pace. You’ve got guys who throw a lot of punches — you know, a majority of the time, I think that everyone game-plans to throw a lot of punches. It hasn’t worked so far. But I’ve faced a lot of great fighters, a lot of guys going down in the Hall of Fame, and guys going down in history as top guys.”
Pacquiao is going to try to do what many other fighters have done against Mayweather by going out there and putting stupid pressure on him for as long as he can.
Mayweather acknowledges this same old tired plan has been tried again and again in the past, and it never works. Even arguably the best pressure fighter in boxing, Marcos Maidana, was unable to defeat Mayweather with his pressure, power and huge size.
Madaina weighed 165 pounds in his first fight with Mayweather in 2014, and it failed to lead him to victory. Pacquiao isn’t nearly as good at putting pressure on his opponents as Maidana. Instead of putting nonstop pressure on his opponents, Pacquiao likes to jump in and jump out, which gives his opponents a break from the pressure. It also makes it easy to time Pacquiao when he jumps in to make an attack.
Mayweather says that throwing a lot of punches at him doesn’t work, and he’s right about that. If Pacquiao doesn’t heed Mayweather’s words and come up with a new and fresh plan for the fight on May 2nd, then I can see Mayweather straight up clowning the Filipino star in front of a huge worldwide audience.
For Pacquiao’s sake, he needs to come up with some new ideas because he’s not fighting Joshua Clottey or Brandon Rios, two of Bob Arum’s old Top Rank stable fighters.
When you watch Pacquiao workout, you’ll notice that he throws a lot of quick flurries less than a foot in front of him rather than extending his arms the way normal fighters do when punching. I think this is a real waste of time for Pacquiao, because Mayweather isn’t going to be crowding Pacquiao to within 10 inches for Pacquiao to throw his shot flurries all night long. That’s a style that is useless against Mayweather because he fights on the outside.
I’m surprised that Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach hasn’t pulled Pacquiao aside and told him ‘You might want to lengthen your punches because Mayweather doesn’t have T-Rex arms. Those flurries you’re throwing are going to be coming up short two feet of the target on May 2nd.’ Seriously, Pacquiao is punching at air as if he thinks Mayweather is going to be clued to him within breathing room rather than Mayweather standing three to four feet in front of Pacquiao all night long.
When you see Pacquiao making constant mistakes in his training, it makes you wonder if Roach is asleep at the wheel in his training. You want to shake some sense into him. Roach should be correcting that kind of stuff instead of him just holding the mitts and whispering words of encouragement to the 36-year-old Filipino star. Maybe Roach has been training Pacquiao too long, and he’s unable to get some perspective on the mistakes he’s making.
If Pacquiao tries the old high volume punch attack trick against Mayweather on May 2nd, I can see it going really badly for Pacquiao. I can see him getting schooled badly by Mayweather with him lighting Pacquiao up like a Christmas tree.
