Atlas: Pacquiao could lose this fight!

"As far as the fight goes with Margarito, I think that's a dangerous fight for him. I personally think Pacquiao could lose this fight. I think that you've got a naturally bigger guy. He is really the bigger guy because Margarito is a big welterweight. He's a horse. He has the stuff that happened in the past, but as far as physicality, this is a big welterweight. He is a guy that throws a lot of punches, he's a guy that is physically strong and, up until the Mosley fight, as you touched on, he was very confident. I think that with this fight with Pacquiao, it presents a lot of areas of danger and real potential problems for Pacquiao that he hasn't faced for awhile...The opportunity is there to hit this guy. And that opportunity will be there for Margarito. And the only way I can look at it, and again, if you can't say what you believe, then you shouldn't say anything. To me, it's the right fight for his promoter, Bob Arum. Arum can't lose; he's got both guys. I'm not sure that it's the right fight for Pacquiao because to me, Pacquiao can make money with a lot of guys. He ain't making extra money because it's Margarito," stated ESPN commentator and world-class trainer Teddy Atlas, who shared his thoughts on the November 13 showdown between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito. You don't want to miss what else he had to say about Pacquiao, Margarito, Hatton, De La Hoya and much more.

PC: You have already stated on Friday Night Fights how you felt about the Texas Commission granting Antonio Margarito his license. Now we are past that, because the fight is happening, so how do you see it playing out? Does Margarito have a chance or will he be another Pacquiao victim? Will Pacquiao capture his 8th title in 8 divisions?

TA: You know, I don't think these guys have 8 titles or 10 titles and stuff like that. I don't think they are real titles. You know, some of these titles are ridiculous; junior middleweight this and the in-between that. There are so many titles and so many weight divisions that, after awhile, if you wanted to and you aspired to, you could have 15 titles if that was your goal. They would create one for you if you needed them to, so I don't think about 8 titles. When I think about the greatest guy who has fought and had multiple titles, I don't think about these guys. I think about Henry Armstrong. That's a man. And it's not that these guys aren't, and they are all great in their places in time and place where they fit in right now, and I give them all of the credit for that, but come on? I mean, 8 titles? Henry Armstrong won the featherweight title, the lightweight title, welterweight title and full titles when there were so many good fighters around. And then he won the middleweight title against Ceferino Garcia, but they robbed him and made it a draw. So really, he won the featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight title. He should have had the middleweight title and he defended all of those titles. When I think about multiple titles, I think about that guy. I think of guys like that, where there were 4 titles and the best guys were around. There weren't spots to where you could pick a spot and just walk into a spot if you had a broken hand, and you could walk into that spot because you knew it was a very soft spot. That's what I think of. I'm not taking nothing away from Pacquiao, but I don't think of his greatness because you attach 8 titles. I'm just thinking of his talents, his speed, his confidence level, his punch output and his improvements over the last couple of years. He comes at you from different angles now. He offers different problems for you now, where before, you used to look for the big punch and now, you have to worry about the right hand and not just the left hand. I look at that and give him credit for those things, but I'm not going to go overboard with the 8 titles.

As far as the fight goes with Margarito, I think that's a dangerous fight for him. I personally think Pacquiao could lose this fight. I think that you've got a naturally bigger guy. He is really the bigger guy because Margarito is a big welterweight. He's a horse. He has the stuff that happened in the past, but as far as physicality, this is a big welterweight. He is a guy that throws a lot of punches, he's a guy that is physically strong and, up until the Mosley fight, as you touched on, he was very confident. I think that with this fight with Pacquiao, it presents a lot of areas of danger and real potential problems for Pacquiao that he hasn't faced for awhile. If you go back, and take nothing away from him, but if you go back to the fights that were really the marquee fights that made his career...put aside the Marquez fights, which were great fights that some people thought he didn't win both of those fights, so that's one thing, you can make an argument that he might not have won (laughing).

Put that aside and you look at De La Hoya and you can make the argument that De La Hoya was dead at the weight, you can make the argument that he is a shot fighter and you can also make the argument that De La Hoya never won a big fight. He never won a big fight. There was just something really wrong with De La Hoya where he would find a way to lose in big fights. Some people will say he beat Quartey. That wasn't considered a big fight. In fact, I think that was De La Hoya's last HBO appearance before he became a pay-per-view star. But if you look at the big fights in his [De La Hoya's] career, he lost them, so you look at that fight and the Ricky Hatton fight, and Hatton may have been a bigger guy, but he wasn't a puncher. I know it's easy to say after the fact, but going in there, you can say he was made to order for Pacquiao. He throws wide punches, he's not a big puncher, he's right in front of you and if you close your eyes, he's right in front of you. And he's going to start a punch from too far away. I remember when I watched the 24/7 and he was training with this guy that had a big body protector on. And he was punching at that body thing and I thought to myself, "Wait a minute, that body suit sits out about 6 or 7 inches from his body. That means he has to bring his hands back to throw a punch 6 inches before he normally would." Normally you would get a little closer to a guy to throw a punch, but now he's throwing the punch from further away because the piece actually comes out and protrudes from his body 6 or 7 inches. So if you're starting to throw those punches 6 or 7 inches out from where you are supposed to throw it, you're exposing yourself to a counter punch when you're starting from that far out, and he was actually practicing it in the gym. I remember watching that and making the comment on it on ESPN and everyone thought I was crazy. We love stuff that's illustrative, so everyone was saying, "That's great and that looks great." But we're not looking close and I'm thinking, every time he throws a punch, it's from further and further away then he's supposed to. That means he's making a space that's available to throw in between. He's exposing himself, and sure enough, he goes into the fight, he goes to throw a punch and bang! Pacquiao hits him with a punch right inside of those shots. Mayweather did it to him too; same thing, right inside of his shot. You can also say, "Well, Cotto was a bigger guy." You can also say Cotto was a damaged guy. You can say Cotto never recovered from the Margarito fight. He took a terrible punishment in that fight mentally, emotionally and physically, so you can say that he was a guy that was made to order. So you take all of those, again, you don't want to take nothing away from Pacquiao, but you want to be honest about it. He had guys that were set up perfectly for him.

Now, you got a guy in Margarito, who really, truly is a bigger guy. I can't really say none of those other guys were guys who were going to have a big, physical advantage because of all of the things I just mentioned. But this guy, we can make that case. I can say, "Margarito is going to be a bigger and more physical guy." Then you say, "Pacquiao is going to be faster and more clever and trickier." And then you look at the Clottey fight, and Clottey threw punches like he was paying for them and he was the cheapest guy in the world. He was throwing punches like they were charging him $10,000 a punch and he had a budget of $5,000. He didn't throw any punches. But I watch that fight, and he threw maybe 7 punches the whole night. Of course I'm exaggerating, but he threw a small amount of punches the entire night, and 4 of them were uppercuts and I think all 4 uppercuts landed. I remember watching it and saying, "Oh my God, look at this. He threw 4 uppercuts in the whole night of boxing and all 4 landed." I thought to myself, wow, you know what? If he was to fight a guy that was more willing, more confident, more disciplined, more prepared, more professional, or whatever you want to call it, but a guy that let his hands go, guess what? The opportunity is there to hit this guy. And that opportunity will be there for Margarito. And the only way I can look at it, and again, if you can't say what you believe, then you shouldn't say anything. To me, it's the right fight for his promoter, Bob Arum. Arum can't lose; he's got both guys. I'm not sure that it's the right fight for Pacquiao because to me, Pacquiao can make money with a lot of guys. He ain't making extra money because it's Margarito. Please don't try to sell me that because I ain't buying. He can make money, comparable money, with a lot of guys. We know the real big one is Mayweather. We understand that, but he can make money with a lot of guys. He doesn't have to fight Margarito, but for Arum, it makes a lot of sense because he can't lose because he's got both guys. I'm not sure that if I was managing Pacquiao that I would be saying, "You know what? At this point in his career, he needs to fight Margarito."

PC: I remember you speaking on air about the telling damage to Pacquiao's face after the Clottey fight. You feel Margarito will actually be more effective than that because he's busier?

TA: We get caught up sometimes in seeing what we want to see. We see the blur of Pacquiao because he's very fast, he's throwing a million punches to the other guy's handful, and we're walking away saying, "wow," because that's all a lot of us saw. It's not all we saw. We did see the other guy throw a very small amount of punches, but they landed and they did damage.