Roach predicts 1st round knockout win for Pacquiao over Algieri

By Boxing News - 11/17/2014 - Comments

roach665By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach has been making knockout predictions for his fighter Manny Pacquiao for many years now, and his fight against Chris Algieri this Saturday night will be no exception.

Roach sees Pacquiao stopping the 30-year-old Algieri in the 1st round when the two fighters get inside the ring this Saturday night, November 22nd, in Macau, China. Pacquiao hasn’t scored a knockout over an opponent since his 12th round stoppage win over Miguel Cotto in 2009. Even in that fight, you can make an argument that the fight should have been allowed to continue due to Cotto still fighting back.

Roach is claiming that Pacquiao had his best training camp in his last 8 fights, and he believes that means he’s going to score a knockout. I’m not sure that it means anything though, because Roach is always crowing about Pacquiao having his best training camp, but then Pacquiao goes out and fails to score a knockout.

“Manny only needs one round to keep his crown,” Roach said to Philstar.com. “Happy, I’m very happy with the way the camp went the past two months. This is the one of the best camp we’ve held,” he added. “Better than, say, Manny’s previous eight fights or so. He’s back to the days when he was knocking out everybody that crossed his path, including opponents much, bigger than him.”

I don’t believe Pacquiao will do any better in this fight than he has in a lot of others, because Pacquiao is starting to show signs of age. He’ll be turning 36 in December, and it doesn’t matter how many sparring partners he looks good against. The reality is Pacquiao won’t be fighting a sparring partner on November 22nd. He’ll be fighting an elusive guy with more size and defensive skills than him.

It obviously would make Roach look better if Pacquiao were able to score a knockout win over Algieri, but I don’t see that happening. Roach should be making a realistic prediction like Pacquiao winning by a decision, because that has a more likely possibility of taking place rather than Pacquiao knocking Algieri out. It’s the wrong opponent with the wrong style for Pacquiao to be knocking Algieri out. Besides that, Pacquiao is too up there in age to stop a young fighter like Algieri.



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