By Scott Gilfoid: Well, I guess you can scratch Amir Khan’s name off the list as a potential candidate for Manny Pacquiao’s next fight in November, because Pac’s trainer Freddie Roach says he doesn’t want to put the boxing fans through the ordeal of having to watch Khan holding 24/7 in a Pacquiao-Khan fight.
Roach, who previously trained Khan in the past, likes his hand speed and his combination punching. But he thinks that Khan’s new style of fighting in which he’s constantly holding his opponents would be off putting for the fans if they were dump their good clean cash on a Pacquiao vs. Khan fight.
I mean, I can’t say I blame Roach for not being excited at the thought of Khan winding up as Pacquiao’s next opponent, because just imagining the picture in my mind of Khan having to be surgically separated from Pacquiao 10-15 times per round by the referee is just too unbearable to even consider. If it was a useless referee with a Laissez-faire attitude working a Khan-Pacquiao fight, then the little 5’6” Pacquiao would be helpless for 12 rounds.
It would be like him wrestling a giant octopus on land, and I don’t think Pacquiao would come out of the battle looking glorious.
“If you’re going to cross over, cross over and get me something exciting. Someone who’s going to make a good fight, that’s what Manny wants,” Roach said. “He [Khan] throws combinations and holds now, it’s so boring. It’s smart but not fun to watch. I don’t want to stink the place out. Danny Garcia wouldn’t do that, Garcia would fight back.”
Roach badly wants to get the slower, less grabbing Danny Garcia for Pacquiao to fight, and I can see he would want that fight, especially after how Garcia was given what many fans saw as a gift decision in his last fight against Mauricio Herrera last March. Garcia won the fight, but he pretty much lost it because Herrera was clearly the better fighter than him. Roach obviously saw what other people saw in watching Garcia get dominated and thoroughly frustrated by Herrera.
Khan would be tougher on Pacquiao because of his constant holding, shoving, pulling down on the head and putting him in head-locks. As good as Pacquiao is, he would be out of his element in dealing with the different roughhouse tricks that Khan would likely use in the fight. Unless Roach had some kind of tactic to defeat those moves by Khan, I can see Pacquiao losing the fight or at least looking so bad that he would come off looking like the loser.
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