Roach: Bradley won’t see the compassionate Pacquiao this time

By Boxing News - 03/11/2014 - Comments

roach45By Chris Williams: On April 12th, trainer Freddie Roach expects to see an aggression and non-compassionate Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) coming out on fire in his rematch against WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach believes Pacquiao will show the type of ferociousness that he’s not displayed since his 12th round TKO win over Miguel Cotto in 2009, which just happens to be the last time that the Filipino fighter last scored a stoppage.

Pacquiao’s aggressiveness and knockout string disappeared after that fight almost as if water was turned of from the faucet. He’s shown little aggressiveness from that point, and he’s not come close to stopping any of his last 7 opponents despite having some guys that he should have been able to stop.

“If Bradley thinks he’s going to see the same compassionate Manny he’s saw the first time they fought he is in for a very big surprise,” Roach said via RingTV.

Manny is 35-years-old now, and will be turning 36 next December. I’m not one of those type of persons believes that a fighter with a 5-year knockout drought is going to be able to suddenly turn it back on at 35. If Roach thinks that Pacquiao is going to suddenly start knocking guys out at his age, I think he’s kidding himself. If Pacquiao had the youth to KO guys still, he would have been doing it in his last 7 fights.

The fact that he’s unable to score knockouts at this point in his career suggests that it’s an age-related problem rather than a lack of aggressiveness on his part. You see it with a lot of older fighters. Look at Bernard Hopkins. I can’t remember the last time he scored a knockout. The same with Shane Mosley. When a fighter gets old, they lose their power and have to win their fights by 12 round decisions. In turn, that leaves them open for getting hit a lot due to the fights going the distance. It all leads to the aging fighter’s career going down the drain rapidly.

Roach doesn’t seem willing to face the truth about Pacquiao and his aging. He’s still under the impression that Pacquiao isn’t stopping his opponents because he’s being too nice. That’s not it. Pacquiao isn’t stopping anyone now because he doesn’t have the power or the engine to fight hard enough to score knockouts like he did during the best part of his career after he moved up to the welterweight division. He doesn’t have his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza working for him any longer, and I feel that he was the most important part in why Pacquiao was getting all those knockouts.

They could have had anyone training Pacquiao during those years and he would have been just as successful. The reason why he was so good was because of Ariza and his strength training. When Pacquiao was following Ariza’s full strength and conditioning regimen, he was knocking guys out left and right. But once he started focusing more on his boxing training and less on his strength training, the knockouts dried up like a desert oasis.

The smartest thing Pacquiao would do if he wants to start knocking guys out again would be to hire Ariza and dump Roach. Let Ariza take over the whole ball of wax and let Roach be the cut man or the bucket person.



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