Roach: Mayweather doesn’t understand how fast and how hard Pacquiao hits

By Boxing News - 03/03/2015 - Comments

roach013By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs), doesn’t think American superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) knows what he’s up against in facing the 36-year-old Pacquiao.

Roach says that Mayweather will be awed by Pacquiao’s hand speed and power when he gets inside the squared circle with him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach points out that Pacquiao’s recent opponent Chris Algieri was shocked at how fast Pacquiao was when he battled him last November.

Algieri said he’s seen Pacquiao fight many times before, but he wasn’t expecting him to be as fast as he was when he got inside the ring with him. Algieri ended up taking a 12 round decision loss. Algieri failed to make any adjustments to what Pacquiao was doing, and he gave up many of the early rounds in following a flawed game plan.

“Manny does have power and Mayweather does not do well with southpaws,” Roach said via Rappler.com. “He really doesn’t understand how fast Manny is and he doesn’t understand how hard he hits. Most people are devastated by the first round.”

YouTube video

Juan Manuel Marquez wasn’t devastated by the first round in his 2012 fight with Pacquiao. He ended up knocking Pacquiao out in the 12th. It’s certainly true that many of Pacquiao’s opponents are “devastated by the first round,” but many of them are also less than the very best fighters.

It helps that Pacquiao has been getting matched against guys like Brandon Rios, and over-the-hill Shane Mosley, Algieri, and the light hitting Tim Bradley. We just saw Bradley go life and death with Diego Chaves, so that kind of puts things in perspective about what Pacquiao accomplished in beating Bradley.

Pacquiao has looked good in the 1st round against many of his opponents with the exception of Marquez, but then again look at the guys that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has been matching him up against.

We haven’t seen Pacquiao fight Kell Brook, Marcos Maidana, Keith Thurman, Amir Khan, Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse or Ruslan Provodnikov. Beating Algieri, Bradley, Mosley and Rios is no big deal. Let’s see what Pacquiao can do when he gets inside the ring with Mayweather.

“When you have a southpaw like Manny Pacquiao with speed that is the best in the world. It’s more than just a regular southpaw,” Roach said.

If Pacquiao’s speed is better than most southpaws, but he’s still not knocking anyone out. What good is having great hand speed if you’re not scoring knockouts? Pacquiao is giving away a half a foot in reach against Mayweather in this fight, and the only way Pacquiao’s hand speed is going to help him is if Mayweather lets him get really close so that he can land his shots.

If Mayweather keeps Pacquiao on the outside all night, then Pacquiao is going to be hitting a lot of air in this fight. Pacquiao is a fast southpaw, but he’s not a powerful one. He doesn’t punch like some of the other welterweights do, and it’s pretty clear that Pacquiao left his power behind when he moved up in weight from the lightweight division years ago.



Comments are closed.