By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach is totally dialed into his fighter Manny Pacquiao absolutely needing a knockout to get past 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez on December 8th. Roach thinks that Pacquiao won’t get a decision this time after winning two controversial decisions and getting a controversial draw against the tough Mexican in fights that fans from different parts of the world saw differently.

Roach said to the Manila Bulletin at mb.com.ph “It has to be a knockout. That’s what we are working on in the gym.”

Roach fails to say what makes this fight different from the other three times Pacquiao fought Marquez and failed to get a knockout. In each of the training camps, Pacquiao appeared to be working on getting a knockout. Indeed, Pacquiao was tearing up his sparring partners and reportedly looking really good in each of the training camps. He even had his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza predicting an early knockout win for Pacquiao. We all know what happened. Not only couldn’t Pacquiao KO Marquez, he couldn’t even beat without GREAT controversy in a fight that was decided ultimately by two judges who saw Pacquiao as the winner.

The boxing public then quickly nullified Pacquiao’s “win” over Marquez by instead seeing it as a loss. So in other words Pacquiao gained nothing from that fight other a win on his resume that many boxing fans in the public didn’t agree with. So now Roach is insisting that Pacquiao needs a knockout win in order for him to guarantee himself a victory.

Roach needs to let go of his desire for Pacquiao to get a KO win and look at something a little more realistic. Pacquiao hasn’t ko’d anyone since stopping Miguel Cotto in a fight that shouldn’t have been stopped three years ago, so what Roach is asking for doesn’t seem to be something Pacquiao can physically accomplish any longer. The Pacquiao knockout well has gone has gone dry and it’s not producing KOs.

Roach asking his aging fighter to do something that his body is no longer allowing him to do is really setting him up to where Pacquiao may be the guy that gets knocked out. It’s like asking an aging sprinter to go out and run 100 meters in 9.58 seconds when he’s no longer even breaking 11 seconds. We could see Pacquiao either get knocked out or injured if he tries to get a KO that his body can no longer accomplish.