By Chris Williams: Normally a fighter in his mid-30s has already seen his better days, and it’s rare that you see improvement in their speed and power. That’s why it’s interesting that Freddie Roach, the trainer for WBO 147 pound belt holder Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs), is saying that he’s seeing improvements in Pacquiao’s speed and power from what he’s shown recently in his fights.
Roach is saying that Pacquiao is showing ability that he hasn’t seen in ages. If this is true, then Pacquiao will be resisting the aging process and turning things backwards. Just how far backwards is unclear. I think it’s safe to say that Pacquiao is going to need to turn back the hands of time at least six years, possibly more, for him to beat the bigger, taller, and arguably more talented WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) on May 2nd in their mega fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Pacquiao that we’ve seen in his last four fights against Chris Algieri, Tim Bradley, Brandon Rios and Juan Manuel Marquez likely won’t have enough talent to handle the game that Mayweather will be bringing to the ring in their mega fight in Vegas. No offense to Pacquiao but he’s really the smaller guy in this fight.
As you know, the bigger guy will always beat the smaller fighter when the two of them have similar talent. In this case, I think Mayweather has the better talent, and with his superior size and ring intelligence, it’s going to be a really tough night for Pacquiao unless Roach is correct about Pacquiao turning the aging process backwards with him suddenly showing speed and power that he hasn’t shown in years.
“I haven’t really seen him have this much speed and power in a long time,” Roach said via Philstar.com. “My chest hurts really bad right now. You can see how much it means to him. He lives for these huge moments, and he knows what this fight means. Floyd is in trouble.”
I doubt that Mayweather is in trouble in this fight unless Roach is on the level about Pacquiao suddenly getting better at the age of 36. Is it possible that Pacquiao can improve at his age? Yes. It’s possible, but Roach would need to change his training completely to see those improvements because you don’t normally see dramatic improvement if you use the same stale training techniques that Roach has been using with Pacquiao all these years.
Making improvements in speed and power at age 36 would make Pacquiao one of the rare ones. You normally don’t see improvements made at that age in both speed and power. If Roach is telling the truth and not just barking to throw Mayweather off, then this could be a fight that Pacquiao might win. But it’s just so rare for a fighter that is heading towards 40 to improve both power and speed in a camp.
Normally a fighter peaks earlier and slow declines each year due to the aging process. But for Pacquiao to be reversing the aging process, it just sounds like a miracle has happened. Having seen the way Pacquiao looked in his last fight against Chris Algieri last November, I don’t think there’s any comparison to this version of Pacquiao and the version that defeated Miguel Cotto five years earlier in 2009.
The Pacquiao defeated Cotto was a much better fighter in my view with better hand speed, stamina, power and movement. It’s like night and day. If you watch Pacquiao-Cotto and Pacquiao-Algieri, it’s very clear that Pacquiao was a lot better in 2009 than he was in 2014. But for Roach to be saying that Pacquiao has improved to an earlier level of his career, it’s hard to believe. I know Roach wants to sell the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but I think he’s going a little overboard here by trying to make a case for Pacquiao reversing the aging process and getting back to a level that we haven’t seen in 2,000 yesterday’s ago.
Comments are closed.