Roach: I see Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight as good vs. evil

By Boxing News - 04/08/2015 - Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zJ__isrjcM
By Chris Williams: For the past couple of weeks trainer Freddie Roach has been trash talking Floyd Mayweather Jr. and giving him very little credit for him having been boxing’s No.1 fighter for most of his long career.

Roach even went so far as to say that Mayweather was taught wrong from the start of his career. But now Roach is characterizing Mayweather’s May 2nd mega-fight against Manny Pacquiao as a good vs. evil type of fight with Pacquiao being the good guy and Mayweather representing the evil side.

Roach says that Pacquiao doesn’t like Mayweather as a person, and this makes Roach really happy. He feels that Pacquiao’s dislike for Mayweather will cause him to fight harder than he normally does. With Pacquiao putting more aggression into his fights

“It is really hard to say these things in public, but I know (Mayweather) is a bad guy,” Roach said via USAtoday.com. “(I see the fight as) good against evil, yes. I have even thought about bringing a couple of the metro cops from Vegas in to tell Manny how many times (Mayweather) has been arrested and how bad of a guy he is, but I decided I can’t go that far. He already doesn’t like him; I think we are OK.”

In Roach’s good vs. evil characterization of the fight, he seems to be going way overboard in trying to hype the fight. The fight is big enough on its own to where it doesn’t need Roach to going for Mayweather’s throat in simplifying the fight in that manner. It’s obviously Roach’s opinion, but it seems very odd to put it like that.

Roach painting Mayweather as a bad guy isn’t going to help things for his fighter Pacquiao any. Pacquiao is still going to need to have the talent to actually beat Mayweather otherwise Roach will have wasted all his time with his talk about Mayweather.

I don’t think Pacquiao comes out ahead by him disliking Mayweather. If anything, it’s likely to cause Pacquiao to fight even harder than he normally does, and that could lead to him fighting in a really sloppy manner and getting knocked out by Mayweather. If Pacquiao had never been knocked unconscious before, I think it would be potentially a good thing for him to dislike Mayweather.

Pacquiao could fight harder and maybe beat him if he had a steel chin. But I don’t think it’s safe for Pacquiao to be fighting with reckless abandon against Mayweather given Pacquiao’s knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.

Mayweather is punching harder now that he’s working out with strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, and this could lead to Mayweather knocking Pacquiao out on May 2nd. The knockout loss would be blamed by some boxing fans in part due to Pacquiao disliking Mayweather so much.

“Manny is really against domestic violence,” Roach said. “It is a big issue maybe in the Philippines for him and being a congressman he can control some of that stuff. That is a big plus for me that Manny does not like the guy, I think the killer instinct is going to come back a lot faster.”

I think it really makes the fight ugly with Roach talking like this. Mayweather isn’t trash talking Roach and Pacquiao by getting in the gutter and looking to dissect them in this way. I don’t think it helps the fight to have Roach talking like this. He should be focusing on the actual fight rather than talking about personal stuff outside of the ring. This is a fight that they’re obviously trying to sell to casual boxing fans who may not be too familiar with either fighter. It’s bad news if they hear or read stuff about Roach talking trash about Mayweather.



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