Roach wants Pacquiao to retire if he beats Mayweather

By Boxing News - 04/24/2015 - Comments

Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: If Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) emerges victorious eight days from now in his mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. (47-0, 26 KOs) his trainer Freddie Roach says he’s going to advise that Pacquiao hang up his gloves and retire from boxing. Roach doesn’t think Pacquiao would have anything left to prove if he beats Mayeather so bother continuing forward.

After Mayweather is out the way, the fights would be smaller and the paydays not nearly the same. Roach feels that it would be best for Pacquiao to get out of the sport on a high note on a big victory rather than a loss.

“I would ask him to quit because there’s nothing else out there,” Roach said via Mlive.com. “I think it would be a great way to retire and I think would be a great way to help Manny try to become president of his country, because I think he’s getting close to that next year.”

Personally, I think it would be selfish for Pacquiao to retire after a win over Mayweather. I don’t think it would be fair to Mayweather if Pacquiao retired off of a win over the American superstar. What about giving Mayweather a badly needed rematch? I’m sure if the shoe was on the other foot, Mayweather would give Pacquiao a rematch so that he would have a chance of trying to avenge his defeat. Mayweather gave Marcos Maidana a rematch when he really didn’t need to. That showed Mayweather’s class by throwing a bone to Maidana for another payday when he really didn’t have to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k34uai5NUc

I think Roach is worried about whether Pacquiao can beat Mayweather a second time around, because Mayweather will know how to defeat Pacquiao’s style the second time around and it might turn out to be a real clowning. I don’t think for a second that Mayweather is going to lose to Pacquiao on May 2nd because I see him as a much better fighter than the Fillipino star, and I see this as another Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez fight. But if Mayweather does lose, it’ll be close and he’ll have the full knowledge in how to easily beat Pacquiao a second time around. I don’t see Roach being able to go back and think up a different strategy for Pacquiao to beat Mayweather because there’s not multiple strategies in how to crack the May-Vinci code.

“Win or lose, it wouldn’t be a bad move for anybody at this point, because really, who do we have to fight after this one? Nobody cares what’s next,” Roach said.

Whether Pacquiao continues to fight could depend on his finances. There are plenty of rumors floating around about Pacquiao owing a huge tax bill that he needs to pay back. The rumors are that Pacquiao owes huge money to where even with his huge payday against Mayweather, it’ll just barely pay off the bills. If this rumor is true, I don’t think Pacquiao is going to be too receptive to Roach’s advice of wanting him to retire after the fight. I could see Pacquiao wanting a second fight against Mayweather so that he can scoop up another $100 million+ payday. Now after a payday like that, I can see Pacquiao possibly wanting to retire, but that would also depend on how much he has left after he gives his promoter Bob Arum his cut of the pie and Roach with his money. What starts out as a $100 million+ payday might be considerably less than that after the U.S taxes are taken out along the cut that he gives Arum, Roach and his training staff. Pacquiao recently said that he thinks he can continue fighting another three years or so. He said depends on how well he’s fighting. If he’s still fighting at the top then he doesn’t see any reason to retire.

“Because it’s such a big, big fight, if somebody gets hurt in this fight, I know the other guy’s going to try to knock him out,” Roach said. “It’s their job.” Of course, Mayweather is going to look to put Pacquiao out of his misery if he gets him hurt, and I’m sure that Pacquiao will do the same thing.

Roach went on to say that Pacquiao has lost his killer instinct since he turned to religion. I don’t know if it’s a case of Pacquiao losing his killer instinct. I think it’s more of a case of Pacquiao getting older.



Comments are closed.