Floyd Mayweather, JR. Vs Manny Pacquiao: Stop Using Marcos Maidana as a Gauge

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By Travis Fleming

A lot of people have been using Floyd Mayweather,JR.’s fights with Marcos Maidana as an indication that Manny Pacquiao will beat Mayweather on May 2nd. The common notion expressed with this train of thought is, that if Maidana was able to hit Mayweather, then Pacquiao, who is much quicker, will hit him more and knock him out, or force him to “run” and lose on points by getting outhustled. These folks are predicting that if Mayweather had to “run” and clinch against Maidana, then he’ll have to do it against Pacquiao even more. I’m here to explain why Maidana is an absolutely useless gauge when predicting what will happen in Mayweather vs Pacquiao, and to give you some points to consider when analyzing the “Fight of the Century”.

– Nobody is scoring a KO in this fight. Maidana hits much harder than Pacquiao and couldn’t do it with clean punches from awkward angles. Pacquiao hasn’t scored a knockout in six years and, similar to Mayweather, is not a powerful welterweight like Maidana. At welterweight, Pacquiao has only scored one stoppage and it was a premature referee stoppage of Miguel Cotto back in 2009. Before that, he knocked out Ricky Hatton at junior welterweight in his last real KO. Since moving up to junior welterweight and above, in nine wins, Pacquiao only has two wins by stoppage and they were both six years ago. Maidana, on the other hand, has scored KO’s in three of his four wins at welterweight, on top of 28 KO’s in 31 wins at junior welterweight. At junior welterweight and above, Maidana’s KO percentage is over 80 percent, while Pacquiao’s is just over 20 percent like Mayweather, JR.’s. Predicting a knockout for either man is wishful thinking.

– Maidana is a much bigger and stronger man than Pacquiao. Maidana outweighs Pacquiao by nearly 25 pounds on fight night. In Pacquiao, Mayweather will be facing one of the only opponents he’s faced as a welterweight that doesn’t have a size and strength advantage over him.

– Neither man is who they used to be, but a review of punch stats from their primes compared to punch stats in their most recent fights will show you that Mayweather still throws and lands at roughly the same percentage as he used to, while Pacquiao has dropped his output significantly and increased his accuracy.

– It is a myth that Pacquiao lands more punches per fight than Mayweather. In fact, they’re pretty damn close. Against Maidana, Mayweather landed 178 and he landed 232 against Alvarez.
Pacquiao landed 229 against Algieri and 198 in his rematch with Bradley.

– In the first fight against Mayweather, Maidana threw 858 punches. Against Algieri, Pacquiao threw 627 and previous to that he threw 563 against Tim Bradley. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll be able to throw more against a much better defensive fighter in Mayweather. Maidana throws a lot more punches than Pacquiao is capable of throwing and does so with a more unpredictable style. Those expecting Pacquiao to throw 80 punches per round are not being realistic as he was only able average around 50 against weaker defensive fighters in his recent outings. Mayweather also has the ability to reduce a fighters volume and make them fight at his pace, as he showed in the rematch with Maidana when he held Maidana to almost 300 less punches than he threw in their first encounter. Mayweather has significantly cut down the typical punch output of guys like Guerrero, Judah, Mosley and Cotto. This tells us that if Pacquiao is only averaging 50 punches per round against lesser fighters, then he should average much less against Mayweather.

– Mayweather typically lands between 42% to 47% of his punches, while Pacquiao typically lands at 30% to 35% which is only slightly higher than what Maidana averages with more punches thrown.

– Maidana likes to fight on the inside, so as the stronger, more powerful man against Mayweather; Mayweather had to result to clinching to avoid getting bullied on the inside. Pacquiao does not fight well on the inside, he is a fighter that launches ambushing flurries from the outside then bounces back out of distance. There will be no need for Mayweather to hold against Pacquiao as he is the better infighter who will not want a break in action when the fight gets taken inside where Pacquiao is uncomfortable and not as physically strong as he is.

– Traditionally, Mayweather fights in the pocket against smaller men and, by mid fight begins to walk them down. Pacquiao does not fight well off the back foot, so dont be surprised to see Mayweather use his ring smarts, superior strength, and infighting ability to keep Pacquiao on the back foot and out of his comfort zone.

The only logical prediction for this fight is Mayweather by unanimous decision; however, anything can happen in boxing. As we saw against Alvarez, Maidana and De La Hoya, Mayweather doesn’t get proper credit with many judges and has been given some pretty bad scorecards. Mayweather will have to win wide if he wants a decision, he can’t afford to give up too many rounds. Evander Holyfield recently said that boxing doesn’t want to let you retire undefeated because there’s more money in a loss and a rematch. He said that even with no rematch, there’s more money by continuing to have a man who beat the man, who beat the man. According to Holyfield, the judges will give the decision to Pacquiao as long as the fight goes the distance and Mayweather doesn’t dominate. I agree, Mayweather will need to win at least eight of twelve rounds to get the decision and, based on the points made in this article, I feel he will do just that