Atlas Jumps Ship, Gives Pacquiao 'Good Chance' To Win

By Radio Rahim

Teddy Atlas, the expert analyst for ESPN2's Friday Night Fights, has jumped ship in terms of his prediction for the May 2nd mega-fight between welterweight champions Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. The pay-per-view fight takes place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

For years Atlas had picked Mayweather to defeat Pacquiao, but his opinion has slowly changed and now he gives the Filipino star a very good shot at winning. He feels Pacquiao has all of the right attributes to secure the upset and hand Mayweather his first career defeat.

“I give the underdog a good chance to win,” Atlas told BoxingScene.com. “Because if you gotta beat Floyd, you have to have quick hands; Pacquiao has quick hands. You have to have to be able to put punches together; Pacquiao puts punches in bunches, for the most part in volumes.”

“You have to have quick feet to get to Floyd. You know Canelo [Alvarez] wasn't that slow when he got whitewashed by Floyd, but his feet was slow, he couldn't get to him. He couldn't get to those places and Pacquiao has the feet to get to those places."

“I don't know if it's gonna turn out to be an exciting fight, because let's not forget, Floyd's way is defense. He's a conservative guy, he's a smart son of gun, he's a careful guy."