A trainer of champions tells Breitbart Sports that the key to Saturday night’s Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather superfight remains hidden in plain view.
“The most important part of this,” Teddy Atlas offers, “that probably no one else is talking about, Manny has the foot speed. What good is the hand speed if you can’t get there?”
Atlas, who famously sat on Michael Moorer’s stool between rounds as an inspirational ploy (“Do you want to cry tomorrow?”) during the fighter’s 1994 triumph over Evander Holyfield to win the lineal heavyweight championship, provided motivation of a more negative sort the decade earlier to another future heavyweight champion when he put a gun to a teenage Mike Tyson’s head to discourage him from bothering his niece. Breitbart Sports caught up with the spirited Atlas after a recent installment of ESPN’s Friday Night Fights at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“He’s got the foot speed to get there, to deliver and get out,” Atlas assesses of the Filipino welterweight. “It’s going to come down to his foot speed, and not getting caught with the right hands.”
In other words, Atlas believes that, unlike Mayweather’s past 47 opponents, Pacquiao possesses extraordinary movement enabling him to take the fight inside in an instant. He cautions that Pac Man must execute a plan to avoid getting tagged as he closes distance, a problem Atlas has seen in past Pacquaio bouts.
The ESPN analyst told Breitbart Sports that Pacquiao must curb his “reckless aggression,” devise a plan for avoiding his opponent’s pot-shotting as he closes distance, put “punches in bunches,” and out-hustle a backpedaling Mayweather if he hopes to make his adversary’s “O” go.
“If he can do the things I just mentioned,” Atlas judges, “he’s got a chance to win the fight.”
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