History will repeat itself. That’s my prediction for the superfight between Floyd Mayweather, Jr and Manny Pacquiao on May 2nd in Las Vegas.
1. May-Pac will resemble Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marvin Hagler in 1987 in which Leonard won a controversial decision by dancing around the ring to stay away from the charging Hagler and his punching power. Similar to May-Pac, Leonard had avoided Hagler for years until the latter got older and was ripe for the picking.
2. The May-Pac superfight will be a duller fight than expected because, as most boxing fans know, it’s suicide for Mayweather to engage the heavy-handed Pacquiao. Casual fans should not confuse pre-fight hype (i.e., richest bout in history) with inside-the-ring excitement. Floyd will use his legs and continually run away from Manny–similar to what Shane Mosley did in his fight with Pacquiao in 2011.
3. Attendees who paid a fortune to watch May-Pac live at the MGM Grand will often boo and jeer Floyd’s constant running. However, I think Mayweather will land just enough scoring punches against the Filipino legend to score a controversial 12 round decision win. Floyd will use his legs to run for most of the 12 rounds, and that strategy will severely frustrate Pacquiao–just as what happened in the Mosley fight in 2011.
Prediction: Mayweather runs away from Pacquiao for 12 rounds, and improves to 48-0 via a controversial decision victory, similar to Sugar Ray Leonard’s close win over Marvin Hagler in 1987.
In four fights against Juan Manuel Marquez, Manny always struggled against his smart counter-punching style. A similar pattern may emerge on May 2nd.
