Roach: Pacquiao isn’t losing because he’s getting old

By Boxing News - 07/15/2013 - Comments

pac6By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) has lost his last two fights and he’s looking nothing like the form that he had back in 2009 when he beat Miguel Cotto by a 12th round TKO. Pacquiao is coming off a vicious 6th round KO at the hands of Juan Manuel Marquez last December, and before that, Pacquiao was beaten by Tim Bradley by a 12 round split decision in June of last year.

Pacquiao looked poor in both fights. However, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach doesn’t think his losses are a result of him getting old. He thinks Pacquiao is still fighting well, and didn’t deserve the loss to Bradley.

Roach said to Yahoo Sports when asked if the soon to be 35-year-old Filipino is starting to wear down as a fighter, “None whatsoever, and I’d tell you if I did. The thing is, people look at the losses and they think the reason is that he’s getting old. That’s not the case, not from what I see. Look, we all thought he beat Bradley…in the Marquez fight, I thought he was doing well.”

I’m not sure how Roach can look at Pacquiao and not see that he’s slipped as a fighter. You could see it even before his fight against Bradley when he won a controversial 12 round majority decision over Marquez in November 2011. Pacquiao looked slower in that fight than he had been, and many people thought he lost that fight, including me.

Pacquiao followed that up in the fight against Bradley where he couldn’t handle the movement from Bradley and was only capable of fighting hard 1 minute of every round. I thought Pacquiao deserved that loss, but even if you say he didn’t, you could see that he wasn’t the same fighter that he once was.

And now with Pacquiao’s recent knockout loss to Marquez from last December, it’s pretty clear that he’s not the same fighter he was in the past. We all saw how Pacquiao was knocked down by a thudding right hand by Marquez in the 3rd round. Pacquiao wouldn’t have been knocked down by that shot if he had been hit by it in 2009.



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