By Chris Williams: While a lot of boxing fans think that WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao needs to totally revamp his fighting style to have a chance of beating WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr in their big mega-fight on May 2nd, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach isn’t one of them.
Roach doesn’t see any point in Pacquiao hitting the reset button on his game, and he also doesn’t see any point in Pacquiao trying to use the same fighting style of some of Mayweather’s past opponents like Marcos Maidana to try and come up with a good enough fighting style to beat him.
Maidana found a lot of success against Mayweather by pressuring him constantly in their first fight a year ago in May of 2014. Although Maidana did come up short, he still found more success against Mayweather than any other fighter since Jose Luis Castillo in 2002.
Maidana’s trainer Robert Garcia isn’t giving the 36-year-old Pacquiao of any chance of beating Mayweather, but he feels that if he at least pressures him constantly like Maidana did, it could give Pacquiao a chance of pulling off a huge upset.
“The only things I learned from the two Mayweather-Maidana fights was that Floyd was hittable,” Roach said via the Manilatimes.net. “Maidana and Manny have such different styles of fighting that whatever his plan was it wouldn’t be adoptable for Manny. Manny just needs to be Manny in that fight. He doesn’t need to adopt any boxer’s fighting style to beat Floyd.”
Roach comes across as a trainer who is too proud to admit the failings of his own fighter. If he can’t even come out and admit that Pacquiao needs to make changes to his game to beat Mayweather, then that tells you that he’s not going to be flexible enough to come up with the new ideas that are needed to win this fight.
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it,” Edmund Burke once said. If Roach isn’t able to see with his own eyes the success that Maidana had with his fighting style in the first fight against Mayweather, then it means that Roach won’t be able to use those ideas for Pacquiao to follow for the Mayweather fight on May 2nd.
I think Pacquiao needs a major overhaul with his current fighting style for him to have a chance of beating Mayweather, because his old jump in and jump out fighting style is not going to work. Roach thinks that Pacquiao will be able to beat Mayweather by him jumping in to land a few shots before jumping out.
Mayweather is going to time Pacquiao on each occasion that he tries that jumping in trick, and he’s going to blast him on the way in and on the way out. It’s going to be a routine after a while, and I think it’s going to turn into a real clowning with Mayweather making Pacquiao look really bad.
What Pacquiao needs to do is limit the times he’s hit with his jumping in attacks. He can do this if he just comes forward like a storm surge and stay in the pocket against Mayweather without moving away. At least if Pacquiao does this, he won’t keep getting nailed as he comes forward on the attack and when he’s backing up.
If Roach isn’t clever enough to realize that Pacquiao is going to get raked with shots due to his reckless jumping in and out style of fighting, then Pacquiao needs to think seriously about getting a secondary trainer that can give him some new incite. Pacquiao could then lean on that trainer for the expert advice for the Mayweather fight, and use Roach more as a secondary guy that holds the mitts and gives pep talks.
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