By Chris Williams: In a sign of a trainer in deep denial, Freddie Roach says he was incredibly impressed with the performance of his fighter WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao in his 12 round split decision loss to unbeaten Timothy Bradley (29-0, 12 KO’s) last Saturday night.

Speaking to boxing writer Chris Robinson at Examiner.com, Roach said “I thought this was one of the best fights since the Cotto fight.”

The best since Cotto? Is Roach kidding? If you take a look at how Pacquiao fought against Cotto, and then watch how he performed last night in a plodding performance against Bradley, it’s like night and day. The Pacquiao that beat Cotto would have destroyed Bradley last night. I admit that. Pacquiao was damn good in the Cotto fight, and moved around the ring like a young puppy. But something happened after that fight, because Pacquiao hasn’t moved like ever since.

All I can think is that he suddenly got old from that one fight. Getting hit with the huge shots from Cotto can do that to you. Pacquiao won that fight, but not before Cotto got in a lot of hard licks. Pacquiao isn’t a naturally big fighter to begin with, and you have a rolls Royce type fighter like Cotto tagging you in the head, it’s going to do something to you. Pacquiao has pretty much been a plodder since he fought Joshua Clottey.

This isn’t the best that Pacquiao has fought since the Cotto fight, and not even close. Pacquiao was better against Joshua Clottey than he was last night. It seems that with each progressing fight, Pacquiao looks worse and worse. He’s not getting better that’s for sure. Pacquiao’s legs looked wooden, as if they were heavy and full of cement. How can Roach say that Pacquiao fought like he did in the Cotto fight. There’s no comparisons.

If look at Pacquiao’s fight last night you can see that he was only capable of fighting hard for one minute of every round, usually in the last part of the round. He was using an Arthur Abraham trick where he would rest for the first two minutes and then try and steal the round with 30 second to a 1 minute left in the round.

That’s what old fighters like to do, guys that can no longer fight the full three minutes of every round. The Pacquiao that beat Cotto in 2009 was able to fight for the full three minutes at an extremely fast pace. Pacquiao was impressive back then, but that fighter is gone now. He’s now a fighter that can’t hop around at all, and instead has to plod around like a heavyweight needing long rest breaks between action.