Teddy Atlas is a boxing trainer and expert commentator for ESPN. In 1997 he founded the Dr. Theodore Atlas foundation in memory of his late father. Let’s welcome Teddy back into the doghouse.
David Tyler – Hi Teddy, we need to discuss the Cotto/ Pacquiao bout this Saturday on HBO PPV.
Teddy Atlas – Dave, I thought that may be why you called. ESPN wanted me to cover that fight and I was supposed to go up to Bristol to do live in-round scoring. For the big fights they get spike traffic that comes over, like when I did the live in-round scoring of the Mayweather/ Marquez fight they found that a lot of people didn’t have the money to pay for the PPV event or they didn’t have HBO to catch the replay.. A lot of fans followed what I was doing by going to ESPN and monitoring my live in-round scoring of the fight. They wanted me to do that again but I’m supposed to go to Russia Monday to train Alexander Povetkin for a fight in early December. I was going to go over there and then come back for the Dr. Teddy Atlas Foundation annual dinner and then head back to training so I’m probably not going to be around for the big fight.
DT – Teddy, what does Manny Pacquiao have to do to win this fight?
TA – Well, first of all you always want to play to your strengths and you got to know what your strengths are and obviously you want to know where your flaws are and stay away from them. The Pacquiao strength is his speed and he is a southpaw. He wants to move to his right, behave like a southpaw and take advantage of being a lefty. Forcing Cotto to deal with angles and use his speed because he is quicker with his feet, his body movement, his hands, he must constantly be reminding himself that he is quicker with the feet, quicker with the body, quicker with the hands. He will need to box from the outside early on in the fight to establish a rhythm. Pacquiao seems to be the kind of guy that sets tones, he sets rhythms and when he gets into a good rhythm his offense flows like good music. I think he wants to get into that rhythm and I believe he wants to have good vision of his opponent so he can see if there is if there are remnants of the ghost of Margarito in the belfries so to speak. In the Clottey fight there certainly was and you could see it with the tentativeness of Cotto especially in the middle rounds. Clottey didn’t take advantage of it and I think that Pacquiao will be aware of that and if he sees some of the ghost of Margarito still hanging around then he might up the tempo a little bit. Cotto should know that he can’t match speed with Pacquiao so he will try to time him in spots. So Pacquiao should be aware of those spots and don’t give Cotto a chance to time him. Pacquiao likes to fight in and out and if he comes in from far enough distance then Cotto could time him so Pacquiao must be aware of this fact, so don’t give him that landscape.
DT – And Cotto……
TA – As for as Cotto, what are your strengths? Well you are the bigger man and one of the good ways to impose your bigness on somebody, so to speak, is to go to the smaller man’s body, that’s a great way of exploiting being bigger is to attack the smaller man’s body. He has a smaller body and you’ve got the bigger body. If you attack his body it provides dividends in other ways too. As the fight goes on it can take some of the speed away, take his wheels away, it can take some of his ability to be mobile. So there is no better way for a bigger man to take advantage of a smaller man than attack his body. Another thing is don’t get into a shootout and try to be Clint Eastwood out there. Don’t just go out there and shoot it out right away. You must have a plan, timing can negate speed, timing can defeat speed, it can take away speed, you must be aware of this, you’re definitely the slower guy but...
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