Mayweather vs Pacquiao preview: 3 keys for both fighters

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao finally square off tomorrow night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. As big as this fight is -- and it’s really, really, really big -- all the hype and the hoopla will die down by the third round. Once the bell sounds, it’s just two men in a boxing ring. That’s it. And then the real work begins.

So who’s got the advantage? As always, styles make fights, and both men have some strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited.

1. Disrupt Pacquiao’s offense

One of the many things that Floyd Mayweather excels at inside the squared circle is disrupting the timing of his opponents with his shoulder roll defense and his quick counterpunching, as well as a jab that doesn’t dominate but does serve as a good weapon (particularly to the body).

If a brawl breaks out, anything can happen. Mayweather could clip Pacquiao, Pacquiao could clip Mayweather. Floyd’s never done that sort of thing, and isn’t likely to start in the biggest fight of his career. But if Mayweather can force Pacquiao to take risks he doesn’t want to take, then that’s a big advantage for Mayweather, whose own timing is incredible. Pacquiao’s fights with Juan Manuel Marquez all show that he has the most trouble against guys who can effectively counter him and cut him off. Marquez and Pacquiao are a special case, fighters so evenly matched that it almost defies proper description, but a lot of what Marquez does well, Mayweather does better.

2. Use space, keep distance

Pacquiao doesn’t present the sort of physical issue that a bigger opponent can for Mayweather. In recent years, we’ve seen Miguel Cotto and Marcos Maidana both successfully use sheer strength to land some good shots on Mayweather. Cotto mixed in some high-level boxing with that, while Maidana was nothing but determination and reckless ferocity. In 2013, many felt Canelo Alvarez had a legitimate shot against Mayweather simply because he was so much bigger.

Alvarez made a crucial, basic mistake: he fought the wrong fight, choosing to box with Mayweather in the center of the ring. Canelo is realistically a boxer-puncher, and not so much a great pressure fighter, but against Mayweather, it was never going to work out for him trying to out-box a master. And it did not. Alvarez was schooled.

Pacquiao lacks that size, but unlike those fighters, he has great hand speed and excellent footwork, and takes the sort of angles that have put opponents on the canvas before they even knew what happened. If Mayweather can use the ring to his advantage, and keep Pacquiao from putting him on the ropes or in the corner, he could make it a relatively easy fight. When Floyd has the space he wants, he has no peer.

3. Make Manny think, not fight

Mayweather (47-0, 26 KO) is best when he’s able to mentally drain his opponents, to get their gears moving more than they’d like. When he’s able to thwart an opponent’s offensive game plan, that often means that they get picked off with his shots on the way in, then have to reset, and never establish any sort of rhythm. Even the fighters who have fared best against him in his career -- Castillo, De La Hoya, Cotto, Maidana -- have struggled to build consistent momentum. Often, this is because Mayweather does so much, so well, that they’re left spending more time thinking than fighting in the moment.

An extreme case of this came in 2010 against Shane Mosley, who landed a couple of brutal right hands in round two. Mayweather held on, survived the rush, and then dominated the rest of the fight. By the middle rounds, Mosley, who was a hell of a good fighter and a likely Hall of Famer someday, looked completely lost, and totally out of his depth. He was thinking, and had stopped working. The second half of Mayweather’s fight with Oscar De La Hoya featured a lot of this, too, and it’s why Floyd beat him. He’s a true master of making adjustments. Even if you have something that works early, he takes it away. Fighting Mayweather is an enormous test of your team’s game-planning. First of all, you need Plan A to work early. Then you need Plan B for when he inevitably takes Plan A away from you. Then you need Plan C for when Plan B either fails or is also quickly taken away. And then you need Plan D for if Plan B and Plan C don’t work. And after that, you basically need a miracle. Most fighters are toast once Plan B fails, if they even get that far.

1. Pressure from volume punching

Like mentioned above, Manny can’t do the pressure game that guys like Castillo, De La Hoya, Cotto, and Maidana did. He is not the bigger man in this fight, and he does not have the physical mass to push Mayweather around. If anything, one might expect Mayweather to see in the early rounds if he can’t walk Pacquiao down and make Manny fight while moving in reverse.

So if size isn’t going to help Pacquiao pressure and disrupt Mayweather, what will? Volume punching. Mayweather is an incredibly accurate puncher, but he rarely throws true combinations these days, often sticking with a pot shot here, a pot shot there, a lead right, a jab to the body, maybe a 1-2 mixed in. He does that because he can. He’s so quick and so accurate that this allows him to mostly dominate opponents who can’t find a way to get their own offense going against him.

If Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KO) lays back and tries to counter Mayweather, he’s going to be in for a long night. As much as the pressure-pressure-pressure style has fallen short against Floyd, trying to box the boxer has never come close to working. Juan Manuel Marquez tried to fight a Juan Manuel Marquez fight in 2009, and Mayweather toyed with an all-time great. The ship on Pacquiao fighting like he did in 2009 or before has sailed; that’s not happening again. But he does need to fight more like that and less like the guy he’s been in some of his recent outings, where he’s seemed content to coast in several rounds. Coasting against Mayweather gets you picked apart.

2. Footwork

Perhaps the best asset for Pacquiao in this fight is his footwork. He moves well, gets in and out quickly, and takes smart angles, which have proven hard for past opponents to defend against. Pacquiao has a style that isn’t exactly like anyone else’s. Like Mayweather or Roy Jones Jr., Manny is someone who can spawn imitators, but nobody can really do what they do.

Pacquiao recently said that he’s watched Zab Judah’s 2006 fight with Mayweather as scouting, hoping to glean something from another fast southpaw with a good punch. The 2015 version of Pacquiao is better than the 2006 version of Judah. Is the 2015 Mayweather better than the 2006 Mayweather? Probably not. Judah was coming off a shocking upset loss to Carlos Baldomir, and though he was beaten clean and clear by Mayweather, he landed some good shots in the early rounds. It’s also worth noting that Judah has never been the most mentally strong fighter, and Pacquiao is a guy who has a lot of heart and a lot of resolve.

Manny needs to make Mayweather uncomfortable, and keeping Floyd from settling into a rhythm is the key to making that happen. To do that, he’s going to have to cut off the ring and make Mayweather fight going backwards -- and even then, he can’t let Floyd get comfortable in doing that, because Mayweather’s pretty good fighting backwards.

3. Stay out of the center of the ring

Pacquiao cannot afford to do what Alvarez did and try to box Mayweather. He might be more successful, but it makes the entire fight a true uphill climb for him. There’s nobody that is going to beat Mayweather in a pure boxing contest. Floyd is too skilled, too smart and too experienced. Everything he does is essentially a reflex at this point, he can do it without even thinking about it. His body and mind work together, and when he’s comfortable, he’s all but unbeatable.

If Manny can get Mayweather into the corners or on the ropes, he might have a chance to work. With his speed, southpaw stance and dual-handed attack, a Pacquiao flurry is a lot less predictable than a Maidana bull rush, or Cotto and De La Hoya backing Mayweather into the ropes and then trying their best to hammer away at the body. Both of those approaches had some success, but they didn’t ultimately get the job done. The variance in offense that Pacquiao can offer might be the biggest chance he’s got in this fight. The hardest punches are the ones that your opponent doesn’t see coming, and when Manny gets going in combination, he can be a tornado of offense.