Manny Pacquiao is interviewed by the media inside the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, California, April 15, 2015. Rem Zamora/INQUIRER
HOLLYWOOD—Manny Pacquiao was warm and open Wednesday. Floyd Mayweather Jr. was cold and subdued Tuesday.
This was the contrasting aura of the protagonists when they faced the media for their May 2 showdown in Las Vegas.
Again demonstrating his drawing power, even in a foreign land, Pacquiao lured over 300 media practitioners, all eager to hear him talk and watch him train at the Wild Card Gym here.
READ: Pacquiao holds media day workout
And they weren’t disappointed.
A radiant, confident Pacquiao was all business in fielding questions and did away with trash-talk in his session with the media at the ground floor enclosure which is off-limits to the public for the duration of training camp for the Fight of the Century in Las Vegas.
Pacquiao then moved up to the main facility at the second floor to strut some of his stuff for a bigger horde of photographers, videographers and television crews chronicling the grandest, most publicized fight of this generation.
READ: Manny Pacquiao’s open workout at Wild Card gym in Los Angeles
While Mayweather may have be the world’s highest-paid athlete and has the bargaining power as the pound-for-pound king, his media workout drew only about 200 or so media personnel who trooped to his gym in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoon.
The American boxer, in that meet-the-press event, referred to Pacquiao as a “very reckless fighter,” a tag the Filipino ring icon laughed off.
“Reckless fighter? That’s how people like me and love me, because they like an exciting fight,” Pacquiao said. “We call this boxing, (and) boxing is more punching. We talk about punching.”
READ: ‘Reckless’ Pacquiao responds to Mayweather’s verbal jabs
Dismissing Mayweather’s claim that he got intimidated in their first meeting in Miami because of his height and build, Pacquiao said he’d fought and beat even bigger and taller guys than the 5-foot-8 reigning welterweight division titlist, like Antonio Margarito, who’s 5-11, Oscar De La Hoya (5-10) and Chris Algieri (5-10).
Told that Mayweather is contemplating on slugging it out with him, Pacquiao chuckled: “If he (does) that, that’s good for me. I like that. We’ll see. That’s what I want, and that’s definitely what the fans want—action.”
Pacquiao, the eighth-division world champion, goes into the fight win a 57-win (38 knockouts), 5-loss, 2 draw record. In contrast, Mayweather is 47-0 with 26 knockouts.
Pacquiao is often on crowd-pleasing attack mode, although he gets careless sometimes—a flaw exploited by Mexican rival Juan Manuel Marquez, who caught him with a perfectly timed right coming in and knocked him out cold in the sixth round in 2012.
Since then, however, Pacquiao has racked up a lopsided victory over Brandon Rios, exacted vengeance over Tim Bradley and demolished Algieri, putting him on the canvas six times.
For his part, Mayweather struggled past Marcos Maidana in their first bout before dominating the Argentine in their rematch.
While Pacquiao believes he’ll blot Mayweather’s immaculate slate, the Sarangani representative also knows it won’t be easy.
Pacquiao and chief trainer Freddie Roach have been studying some of Mayweather’s fights to come up with a perfect plan for the welterweight division unification crown at MGM Grand.
For more updates on Pacquiao-Mayweather “Fight of the Century,” visit The Pacquiao Files.