Pacquiao VS Thurman: A Technical Summary

You're right about Thurman being a better athlete and counterpuncher, but his speed is another one I'm waiting to see. He looks slow. Cotto was much faster and in his fight with Pac, he kept up with his speed.

A prime Cotto would also fold and stop Thurman, Thurman would have 0 answers to anything Cotto does to him.

 

Same here. I don't understand why people keep on saying that Thurman has good footwork. He doesn't. He backpedals A LOT.
He's no Marquez or Morales wo can fight off the back foot.
He's no Mayweather who can throw accurate check hooks.
Look at how easily Pacquiao evaded Broner's check hooks. And AB is much much faster than Thurman in throwing those.
It will be similar to how Algieri tried to control the distance except Keith has more power behind his punches.
Thurman will need to jab a lot to throw Pac off, because once Pac gets him in his range, I would bet that there's a bigger chance that Pac will time him better and give him a flash KD, than Thurman will time Pac with those looping right hands and serve Pac a KO.

Pac's straight left (and his reluctance to throw it) and Thurman's jab (which he better worked on) will be keys here.
If Thurman backpedals all night. he loses.
If Pac is hesitant to throw his left and follow ups, he loses.
Pac has underrated range finder jabs and straights to the body (he folded AB with one sick body punch).

 

Pac is NEVER reluctant to throw his left. It's his moneymaker and game changer. It does damage if it lands. Guaranteed.

 

Fingers crossed Manny's in and out all night. Keep Thurman chasing every single round, don't need no knockout.

 

Which is why I don't see Pac losing this one.
Although to be fair, I missed his lead lefts. Those were a thing of beauty. He doesn't throw it as much today. The way he punished both ODLH and Cotto with laser accurate lead left counters to the jab was splendid to watch.

 

Manny will go to the body alot in this fight
It's been evident form some of the vids posted online that's what there working on

 

One thing I've been surprised at is the openness of both camps. Thurman showed sparring footage and Roach talking blatantly about strategy. I wouldn't expect that.

 

Maybe he could be more economical and effective with his footwork but to say he has bad footwork is just plain wrong. He can do everything while on the move, better than a lot of fighters. He can move effortlessly from whatever side he wants and still pull off hard turns and pivots and counter off that movement.

Pacquiao is good at avoiding left hooks(getting inside of them too). But Broner is also a really simple-minded fighter, he made it so obvious he was going to throw a left hook and would often use it as a counter to everything for maybe an entire rd. I was facepalming at that. No thinking whatsoever, he was throwing it out as filler to keep Pacquiao away.

Pacquiao’s key’s to victory here is just staying smart, try to outsmart Thurman and outpoint him, if he hurts him he can try for a stoppage for a bit, but if he tries to fight like a prime Pacquiao, where he’s trying to break thurman I have my doubts that he can outlast the younger man.

 

Keith has looked bad in training camp videos... I think his team are deliberately putting out such videos to mislead.

 

Possible. It looked like early days in camp too.

 

Pac's smart, though. He said he didn't watch the Lopez fight, but rather he focused on the Danny fight where Thurman looked his best.

 

They definitely were putting out bad or fake videos on purpose. Keith's punches were fast and sharp.

 

what do you think? ive watched a few minutes of some of his videos and realized he dksab. so did the blind squirrel find a nut today? did he call it like it happened?