Mayweather vs. Pacquiao Results: Punch Stats and Top Takeaways

Manny Pacquiao went into his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. confident that he could get through his opponent's sharp defense and land a significant number of impactful punches.

It's good that he was confident in his abilities. It would have been better had he actually figured out a way to land the punches that he threw, though.

If you saw the fight Saturday night, it looked like Pacquiao was regularly slowed by Money's ability to avoid or block punches. That started in the first round, which was quite important in this fight.

Mayweather has been a slow starter in his recent fights, while Pacquiao is a swarming type of fighter who throws a high number of punches from a variety of angles. The fact that he is a southpaw makes his left-handed punches even harder to defend.

However, Pac-Man did not get off to the fast start that he wanted in the first round. He threw punches but did not land them with enough frequency.

Mayweather landed the hardest punch of the first round, and that straight right got Pacquiao's attention right away. When Money was able to walk back to his corner with the first round safely marked in his favor on the scorecard, it set the tone for a defensive exhibition the rest of the night.

The numbers bear this out. According to CompuBox, Pacquiao landed 81 of 429 punches in the fight, a success ratio of just 19 percent. Mayweather did not throw a lot of punches in this fight, but he landed a much higher percentage than his challenger. Money connected on 148 of 435 punches, for a 34 percent success rate.

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Mayweather basically won this fight because he had some success with his left jab, while Pacquiao did almost nothing with his right jab. Money connected on 67 of 267 jabs, while Pacquiao found the mark on 18 of 193. Mayweather's ability to keep Pacquiao from getting anything going with his jab was one of the champion's best assets.

Pacquiao was widely recognized as the harder hitter prior to the fight, but Mayweather landed 81 power punches, compared to 63 for Pac-Man. While the difference was relatively close, Pacquiao needed to have a significant edge in that category if he was going to have a good chance of coming out with the victory.

While Mayweather had a first-round edge, Pacquiao had bursts in the third, fourth and sixth rounds that excited the crowd and seemed to give him momentum. However, whenever he landed a power punch or a flurry of blows, Mayweather's confidence and ability to move quickly kept his opponent from turning a rally into a knockdown.

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Once the fight got into the seventh round and beyond, the action quickly moved to Mayweather's favor. His foot speed and hand speed became the determining factors in each of those rounds. He was able to dart in and out of the pocket without absorbing many punishing punches, and his quick hands enabled him to deliver his own shots and block the majority of punches that his rival threw.

It was not the kind of exciting match that many boxing fans wanted to see, with two fighters bringing out the best in each other in a memorable fight.

However, Mayweather fought a brilliant technical fight and improved his record to 48-0, which is exactly what he wanted to do when he stepped into the ring.