Roach: A knockout will come for Pacquiao against Bradley

By Boxing News - 05/31/2012 - Comments

Image: Roach: A knockout will come for Pacquiao against BradleyBy Chris Williams: Freddie Roach continues with his tradition of predicting knockouts for his fighter Manny Pacquiao for his fight against Tim Bradley on June 9th. It’s like a tradition with Roach like Thanksgiving. He’s always predicting knockouts for his fighter, and with each fight that goes by without Pacquiao getting a knockout, Roach is looking sillier and sillier.

Pacquiao has knocked anyone out for three years, but that doesn’t stop Roach from still predicting them. He just keeps plugging along, predicting KO no matter what, and usually early knockouts. I knew Roach had no clue what he was talking about when Pacquiao fought Joshua Clottey, and even against him, Roach was predicting a knockout. Of course it didn’t happen, and it was silly to make such a prediction in the first place anyway because how hard it is to hit Clottey cleanly due to his high guard.

Roach told the Sports.inquirer.net “Somewhere along the way the knockout will come. He’s [Bradley] never been a puncher and he’ll never be one. Punchers are born not made. He is so slow and Manny is so fast. It’s going to be night and day.”

Well, that sounds interesting but there’s one problem with that. Bradley is faster than Pacquiao’s last opponent Juan Manuel Marquez, and he fought well enough to deserve a decision. He didn’t get one but boxing fans pretty much unanimously saw Marquez winning the fight. If a slow fighter like Marquez was able to dominate Pacquiao, then what do you think will happen when a faster, younger fighter like Bradley faces him? He’ll do the same thing that Marquez did, but he’ll do a better job at it.

Roach just needs to stop making KO predictions because he’s obviously living in the past when Pacquiao was fighting old guys like Oscar De La Hoya, and weight drained and defensively wide open fighters like Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto. Knocking those guys out isn’t a big deal, because they’re so badly flawed. But you can’t expect Pacquiao to do that against a quality fighter like Bradley.



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