hhhhmmmm, another strong prediction...

But Pacman is not a known boxer, but a slugger. The difference is he has fast hands and feet, and is not known to ride his scooter in the ring.

And it may be Pacman who knows a lot about controlled savagery...

WARNING!!!










SPOILER!!!!!
















http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4096867

I think you'll find Pac was a slugger before he teamed up with Roach, which might explain how he lost to a semi shot Morales in the first fight. He has since turned into something of a boxer. Personally i hope he does want to make a fight of it, cos the 6 round prediction becomes 3. I think his hand and footspeed is very over rated. Anyone can look fast against shot fighters, and ordinary fighters like Diaz. JMM isn't known for his speed, but Pac wasn't able to sli[p in hit him and slip out like he did with Oscar, and Diaz.

Roach says Hatton's team is making excuses in advance


Ed Mulholland / US Presswire
Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton shake hands after weighing in for their junior-welterweight bout.
There are reports of training camp friction in the Englishman's corner before fight with Pacquiao.

By Lance Pugmire
May 2, 2009

A day after Ricky Hatton's trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. hinted there was some training camp friction in the Englishman's corner, the opposing veteran cornerman said the alibi-making has begun.

"I think it's just excuses," said Freddie Roach, who trained Manny Pacquiao for Saturday night's 140-pound main event against Hatton at MGM Grand. "Now, when Manny beats him, they've got an excuse."

The fighters weighed in Friday, with Hatton stepping on the scales at the junior-welterweight limit 140 pounds while Pacquiao weighed 138.

England's Hatton (45-1, 32 knockouts) is expected to surge in weight before he steps into the ring and should easily surpass Oscar De La Hoya as the heaviest man Filipino icon Pacquiao (48-3-2, 35 KOs) has fought.

"Ricky genuinely believes he'll knock Manny out," Hatton attorney Gareth Williams said. "He's the naturally bigger guy, and Manny's victory over De La Hoya isn't impressive given the condition Oscar was in."

Yet, it was Hatton's camp left to defend the condition of their team unity.

On Thursday, Mayweather, training Hatton for the second bout after a previous impressive battering of Paulie Malignaggi, told reporters near the end of a round table conversation that the training camp had included some conflict.

"It doesn't mean it's not a good camp if we have a problem," Mayweather told 15rounds.com and Yahoo Sports. "Was there a problem? Yes."

The animated Mayweather reportedly had a personality conflict with Hatton's assistant trainer from England, Lee Beard, although Hatton's attorney was quick Friday to dismiss the reported tension. Thursday, Mayweather explained that it was "not just me and Lee, but you might be on the right track."

In one scene from the HBO reality series "24/7," Hatton was seen waiting in the gym for Mayweather to show up. A separate shot showed the trainer at a Taco Bell.

Friday, Williams talked about "some idiots stirring things up on the Internet," and addressed an issue that he describes as "absolute nonsense. Floyd's the man, and Ricky is happy with Floyd."

And Mayweather was hurrying to retract anything he said the day before. In a telephone conversation with The Times before the weigh-in, he said, "It's all lies, we had no dispute. Ricky will be good and Freddie can talk all he wants. What does a Roach know anyway? A Roach ain't got a brain. I'll let you all see how well the camp went tomorrow night.

"Whatever I said, let it be."

The Yahoo Sports story said Roach could emerge as a possible replacement trainer.

"I like guys like him, I think we would fit well because I like guys who work hard and fight hard, but right now I'm training my guy to knock him out," Roach told The Times. "The problem I have with [Mayweather] is that it's always about me, me, me, and he never talks about his fighter. I might be the best trainer, but it's only because I train Manny Pacquiao."

Peak condition

Pacquiao is a 5-2 favorite at Las Vegas sports books, and Roach, known more for truth than hype, said his fighter has never been "so focused" in his attempt to win a fourth consecutive fight in a different division.

"He's driven to get better and better and he looks so good," Roach said. "In a workout this week, he did everything in the game plan perfectly. I had nothing to criticize him for when he came back to the corner. I just said, 'Manny, you're looking great.' He knows exactly what to do. I believe we'll knock [Hatton] out."

Undercard

An injury to world super-featherweight champion Steven Luevano of La Puente and a gun charge against unbeaten rising star James Kirkland weakened the fight card before Pacquiao-Hatton, but it does include a WBC super-featherweight title bout between champion Humberto Soto (47-7-2, 30 KOs) of Mexico and Canada's Benoit Gaudet (20-1, 7 KOs), and an appearance by unbeaten middleweight Daniel Jacobs (15-0, 14 KOs) of Brooklyn.

Next big fight

Mayweather's unbeaten and retired son Floyd Jr. is in negotiations to return to fight July 18 in Las Vegas against Mexico's Juan Manuel Marquez, said Marquez and an HBO source.

"We're still negotiating," Marquez told The Times on Friday. "I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. I'm training now [in Las Vegas], and that's what I'm pointing to."

An MGM Grand official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the hotel is saving the date for the bout.

Meanwhile, Marquez will need to spend at least another week in Las Vegas because he said he's been told to stay out of his home in Mexico City because of swine flu.

Times staff writer Kevin Baxter contributed to this report.

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

The fun, and cash, flows around Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton


Ed Mulholland / US Presswire
A Manny Pacquiao fan displays his sign proudly during the weigh-in Friday for the junior-welterweight bout between Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton.
The Las Vegas fight that bespeaks excess could be a good one.

Bill Dwyre
May 2, 2009

From Las Vegas -- Boxing's current theater of the absurd ended Friday, and now they can fight.

Saturday, shortly after 8 p.m., 2-1 favorite Manny Pacquiao, the pride of the Philippines, will take on Ricky Hatton, the pride of the pubs of Manchester, England.

One of the pitches of the promotion, billed as the Battle of the East and West, is that the fighters have come from opposite ends of the earth to meet in the center of a ring in Las Vegas. Stated less dramatically, they have come from opposite ends of the earth because each is guaranteed around $12 million.

The roughly 16,000 seats in MGM's Grand Garden are sold out.

"This is a real sellout, not one of those sellouts where we still have tickets left," said one boxing official. That brought to mind the boxing promotion axiom uttered by Top Rank's Bob Arum, who once said, when pressed on a statement, "I was lying to you yesterday. Today, I'm telling you the truth."

The economics of the fight revolve around much more than the live gate. Promoters are hoping to sell as many as 1 million HBO pay-per-views in the United States at $49.95 each, and maybe even more than that in Britain. They also are selling tickets for closed-circuit viewing at one of seven other Las Vegas hotels, which have a total of 20,000 seats available for $50 each. Pacquiao will get 52% of the additional action after his $12-million guarantee.

So the cash should flow as freely as the fun did Friday, when boxing once again made a huge show out of two guys standing on a scale in their underwear. Hatton weighed the limit of 140, Pacquiao 138, and everything that preceded that 20 seconds of action was showbiz.

An estimated 25,000 Brits have flown over the pond, as well as the prairies, to be here, and perhaps 5,000 of them got into the arena for the free-of-charge weigh-in. Of those 5,000, a good guess is that 500 had tickets for the fight. Another good guess is that they will challenge the Las Vegas beer consumption record established the last time Hatton fought here.

Question: When does a Brit fight fan lose his membership in the club? Answer: When he is caught without a bottle in his hand.

Besides the Brits singing and booing and having a grand old time, the weigh-in featured an alleged Hollywood celebrity named Mario Lopez, asking various ex-fighters dumb questions that nobody could hear over the din of the crowd anyway.

Lopez to Oscar De La Hoya: "When is the last time you saw this kind of crowd at a weigh-in?"

Correct answer, which De La Hoya didn't give: "Oh, Mario, maybe for my last 10 fights."

There was also Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, telling the crowd, "My philosophy is that every Mexican boxing fan is rooting for Manny Pacquiao."

(Philosophy? Every Mexican boxing fan?)

And Richard Schaefer, Hatton's promoter for Golden Boy, responding by leading the crowd in yet another verse of "There's only one Ricky Hatton."

(Headline in tomorrow's Geneva newspaper: "Former Swiss Banker Goes Goofy.")

Mercifully, there is always a fight at the end of all this, and Pacquiao-Hatton should be a decent one.

The sense here is that 30-year-old Pacquiao, even though he is only two months younger than Hatton, is a boxer on the rise and Hatton is one who, deservedly, is cashing in on a few last big paychecks before settling down to Wednesday night dart-throwing.

Both have fought a lot, Pacquiao with a 48-3-2 record that includes 36 knockouts, Hatton with 45-1 and 32 KOs. Hatton's one loss was to undefeated and about-to-come-out-of-retirement Floyd Mayweather Jr., who sent him into the ring turnbuckle and then down in a spectacular knockout.

Expect Hatton to charge out early and try to establish a barge-and-bully pace. Expect lots of quick flurries from him, followed by some grabbing and wrestling, followed by some punches out of breaks that he initiates before the referee can, making them legal.

And expect that, if that works, Pacquiao could be in trouble, even get caught and put down early, or at best have to fight a different kind of fight than his trainer, Freddie Roach, wants.

If it doesn't work, if Pacquiao scores well in the early rounds and is the one establishing the rhythm of the fight, as he did against De La Hoya, then look for a frustrated Hatton to eventually walk into a left hook and come to rest somewhere near the same turnbuckle where Mayweather Jr. left him.

Do not expect this one to be jab-and-dance, poke-and-run, let the judges decide. That could happen, but it would disappoint fans from opposite ends of the earth.

As well as those right here in Las Vegas, on boxing's axis.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com.

DOES THIS MAKE FLOYD P4P NOW

manny is the champ so he should make the calls.
manny vs cotto wiil be intresting if it happens, cotto is alot stronger than hatton