Roach: Pacquiao will throw flashy flurries when Mayweather is against ropes

By Boxing News - 04/12/2015 - Comments

roach67By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) has feasted his entire career against fighters that attempt to hit him combinations and flurries. For some reason Mayweather just does incredibly well against fighters that come after him trying to overwhelm him with punches, yet his opponent always seem to try and use this same plan every time they face him.

On May 2nd, Mayweather will be facing Manny Pacquiao, a fighter who typically beats his opponents by hitting them with small flurries interrupted by and out attacks.

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach believes that Pacquiao will be able to have success against Mayweather using these same flurries that he’s used against opposition that were much inferior to Mayweather in the talent department. Roach believes that because Pacquiao’s fighting style worked against guys like Chris Algieri, Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley and Shane Mosley, that it’ll work against Mayweather too.

We’re going to find out on May 2nd if this is true when Mayweather and Pacquiao go at it in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada in their mega-fight. I suspect that Pacquiao and Roach will fail and end up looking as bad as some of Mayweather’s other overly aggressive opponents looked in the past. I hope just hope Pacquiao gets a clue after this fight and thinks about getting help in terms of his coaching staff because he needs better ideas.

“When we [Pacquiao] get him [Mayweather] against the ropes, which we will put him on the ropes, we [Pacquiao] will be laying in some really flashy flurries, 5, 6, 7, 8 punch combinations,” Roach said. “Floyd doesn’t counter until you’re through [throwing punches]. So if we [Pacquiao] throw 5, 6 punch combinations, get in under and out, I think we’ll be in the same territory, and make him miss, I think we’ll outscore him. I [Pacquiao] plan on winning every round one round at a time. I don’t know if it’s going to be a knockout. If the knockout comes then it’s going to be a bonus, but we’re going to win every round,” Roach said.”

Roach is talking about throwing 8-punch combinations as if Pacquiao is facing a punching bag that doesn’t hit back. You don’t throw eight punch combinations against the elite in boxing. Even trying to throw four and six punch combinations is a recipe for disaster for Pacquiao. It might work for him if they had him matched against an ESPN level welterweight who was just starting out his career and didn’t have any hand speed to speak of. But this is Mayweather that Pacquiao is facing and I see it going really badly for Pacquiao in this fight unless he smartens up and fights with a little more control and less like a wild man.

Throwing flurries against Mayweather could result in Pacquiao getting knocked clean out. I’m not sure if Roach has figured out that Mayweather is a counter puncher and that he’s going to be countering Pacquiao each time he attempts to throw one of his flurries. Throwing combinations is fine when you’re facing limited fighters like the guys that Pacquio has been matched up against in the last two years of his career, but when you try to throw flurries against quality guys, it doesn’t work out too well. We saw happened to Pacquiao when he tries to throw combinations against Juan Manuel Marquez in their fight in 2012.

Pacquiao was knocked unconscious. You can’t fight like that against good fighters, only mediocre ones with no power and limited talent. That’s why we saw Peter Quillin and Andy Lee throwing one punch at a time in their fight last Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Had those two fighters looked to throw flurries like Roach is talking about, we would have seen one of them knocked out. It wouldn’t have worked out. Roach needs to make some mental adjustments and realize that Pacquiao isn’t fighting one of Bob Arum’s limited stable fighters. This isn’t Brandon Rios that Pacquiao will be fighting on May 2nd. This is the best fighter in boxing.

Pacquiao is going to get hit a lot in this fight against Mayweather unless he does a complete revamp of his fighting style, and fights a lot more defensively with one punch at a time. To be sure, Pacquiao can try and fight Mayweather like he’s done against the limited opposition he’s faced his entire career, but I suspect it’s going to go really badly for Pacquiao with him getting stunned and then knocked out. Mayweather is hitting hard now given his new focus on his punching power, and I’d hate to see what he does to Pacquiao if he connects in between one of Pacquiao’s flurries.

Amir Khan is another fighter who likes to throw flurries, or should I say he used to like to throw flurries. That style resulted in Khan getting knocked out again and again after he turned pro. Roach didn’t coach it out of him, and Khan eventually realized that Roach wasn’t able to fix his problems with his style. It wasn’t until Khan dumped Roach in favor or Virgil Hunter that he was finally able to stop getting knocked out.

Right now, I think Khan would beat all the guys that he lost to in the past because he’s throwing one punch at a time and not taking risks with his offense. Pacquiao needs to do the same thing because he’s too old to be fighting with the style he has now, and he’s got that bad knockout that he suffered against Marquez to worry about. You never know what kind of damage that might be lingering inside his head from that devastating knockout. The last thing that Pacquiao needs is to get knocked cold again but this time by Mayweather.

Roach’s ideas for Pacquiao are flawed. This whole idea of Pacquiao going out and throwing a massive amount of punches against Mayweather are ideas from the past when Pacquiao was younger, and fighting at a lighter weight against limited opposition in watered down divisions. That kind of game plan won’t work against Mayweather, and I doubt it would work against other quality welterweights like Khan, Keith Thurman, Kell Brook and Marcos Maidana.



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