By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach has talked of wanting to keep it a secret for what he plans on having his fighter Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) do when he gets inside the ring with Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) on May 2nd, but Roach couldn’t help himself, as he’s already spilled the secret.
To be honest, it’s not really much of a secret though, because it’s been obvious for the last six years that Pacquiao’s only chance of beating Mayweather is to cut off the ring and put constant pressure on him by throwing a lot of punches.
Pacquiao doesn’t have the height, reach or leg speed to fight a battle on the move against Mayweather. Pacquiao absolutely needs a stationary target, because if he faced someone that moves around on him, he’s going to get beaten and perhaps badly.
“Mayweather is a slick guy, and he is not the easiest guy in the world to fight. The thing is we have to attack him a lot and have that ring generalship, and Manny has to work on cutting off the ring,” Pacquiao said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
There it is in a nutshell for Roach; he wants Pacquiao to attack Mayweather constantly. Somehow this kind of reminds me of the exact strategy that Roach came up with for Pacquiao’s last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.
Roach wanted Pacquiao to fight like he was 25-years-old again by attacking Marquez nonstop. Unfortunately for Roach, he forgot to take account of the fact that Pacquiao was fighting a quality fighter with excellent power, and not one of the aging or beatable fighters that Pacquiao had been matched up against since his fight against Miguel Cotto in 2012.
Pacquiao followed Roach’s advice to the letter and charged straight into a right hand from Marquez, and was knocked clean out.
Yes, Pacquiao fought like a 25-year-old, but a 25-year-old with no sense of what he was doing and who he was facing. You have to remember that back when Pacquiao was 25, he was given a controversial 12 round draw against Marquez in a fight where Marquez lost the 1st round, but then out-boxed Pacquiao in the final 11 rounds.
How the judges scored the fight a 12 round draw is anyone’s guess, but I saw it as a clear win for Marquez. The reason why Marquez dominated the fight was because Pacquiao fought a sloppy fight by putting mindless pressure on Marquez and getting hit constantly by his counter shots.
I think Roach might want to have another trainer come in and give him a hand in coming up with a good strategy for Pacquiao to use against Mayweather, because Roach’s idea of Pacquiao simply attacking Mayweather all night long isn’t going to work. It’s likely going to work in getting Pacquiao badly out-pointed and possibly even knocked out at some point.
Maybe if they brought in trainer Virgil Hunter, he could come up with a good game plan for Pacquiao to use against Mayweather other than the one that Roach wants him to use. I don’t know if Roach could handle having a second voice working on a game plan, but I think he badly needs it.
Roach recently won the trainer of the year for the 7th time. I don’t see him as being the trainer of the year, because his top two fighters – Miguel Cotto and Pacquiao – didn’t really beat anyone that I consider of quality.
Cotto beat an old, rusty Sergio Martinez, who was coming off of two knee surgeries. Cotto’s other win before that was against Delvin Rodriguez, a 2nd tier fighter. Pacquiao beat Tim Bradley and Chris Algieri, neither of which I consider great fighters.
Comments are closed.