LAS VEGAS – You get tired and Manny Pacquiao will knock you out.
This piece of advice directed at Oscar dela Hoya came no less from his former trainer, Emmanuel Steward who thinks that Pacquiao will have a very good chance of scoring a stoppage if the Golden Boy tires out.
“Oscar has the tendency in all of his big fights to fall apart in the later rounds,” said Steward, who trained Thomas Hearns, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Julio Cesar Chavez and Wladimir Klitschko.
Steward said while Dela Hoya has the physical advantage (four inches in height and six inches in reach) Pacquiao will have the speed and the power to stop bigger fighters.
“That’s why Oscar has to keep his distance. He can move around, slip-and-slide with his left jab and left hook. Manny Pacquiao is a good fighter but he’s giving up a big weight advantage in this fight. Oscar is big but he’s not slow,” he said.
Pacquiao’s relentless style, Steward added, can make Dela Hoya struggle.
“Pacquiao can show the intensity from the first round to the 12th round. What Manny has going for him is a great punching power I’ve never seen in a long time – from the first round until the 12th round. Most big punchers like Mike Tyson are good only in the first four rounds then they tire,” he added.
Steward said Dela Hoya normally takes control of the fight early, but fades in the later rounds, and he did show this weakness in his fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley and Bernard Hopkins.
“If Oscar gets tired against Manny, Manny will knock him out. Oscar, even if he’s tall, bends over when he fights so he might take away that height advantage and Manny gets him. You look very closely because we studied this – he bends forward. Manny can hurt him because he punches harder than Oscar,” Steward noticed.
“Manny is very, very strong and if Oscar gets tired...,” Steward continued.
Jim Lampley, who works the big fights for HBO along with Steward and Larry Merchant, also believes that Pacquiao’s speed will be there, the same type of speed that brought down David Diaz in his lightweight debut only last June.
“One thing going for Manny, based on my experience working with HBO, is that he gets faster and better when he moves up in weight. He was faster and better at 126 from 122, faster and better at 130 from 126, and faster and better at 135 from 130,” Lampley said.
“So it’s a fight about whether Pacquiao’s search-and-destroy style would be easy against a technical boxer with a four-year advantage. Oscar fights well going backwards and I think Manny only knows one way to fight – he’s a hunt-you-down-and-hurt-you type of guy.
“I don’t see Manny Pacquiao winning a decision. If Pacquiao catches Dela Hoya in the later rounds he can hurt him.”
Merchant, who was the first to bring up the idea of pitting Dela Hoya against Pacquiao, also shared his thoughts on the “Dream Match.”
“What Manny has is he’s in his prime with great energy. And he’s a left-handed real puncher. We’ll see how his punch matters against the bigger men because Oscar has a good chin even among bigger men,” he said.
The 76-year-old Merchant added that the opening rounds will be more crucial for Pacquiao.
“I think what happens in the first three or four rounds will determine the fight. If Manny can get through those rounds and try to impose his activity on him and hope that in the last third of the fight he can control the fight.
“But he must get through the first four rounds. I don’t know what Manny has in mind I think that Manny has to give him something to think about early in the fight,” he told Pinoy scribes in LA.