Roach wants to inspect Mayweather’s custom made gloves

By Boxing News - 04/26/2015 - Comments

floyd36By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach reportedly wants to inspect Floyd Mayweather Jr’s custom made Grant gloves as well before next Saturday night so that if he has any objections to the gloves there will be time for the matter to be worked out. Roach will have to wait until Friday, the day before the fight before he can inspect the gloves.

It won’t be surprising if Roach objects to the gloves causing a problem that could last deep into Friday night. It’s almost predictable in a last second bit of gamesmanship from Roach to try and throw Mayweather off enough for Pacquiao to gain an edge.

“Grant is doing his gloves, and they’re all custom-made, and I’d like to know what he’s using — like what he’s putting in those gloves, and what materials they’re made with,” Roach said via Mlive.com.

Mayweather’s team had objections to Marcos Maidana’s Everlast MX gloves that he wanted to use before their first fight last year in May. Mayweather and Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, felt there wasn’t enough passing in Maidana’s gloves, and they didn’t want to go through with the fight unless he exchanged them for another time. A deal was finally reached after a bit of drama. The end result was that Maidana wore a different type of gloves, but he remained unhappy about the incident and felt that he would have scored a knockout over Mayweather if he’d been able to wear his favorite Everlast MX gloves.

Pacquiao plans on wearing 8 ounce Reyes gloves for the Mayweather fight, according to Mlive.com. The Reyes gloves are considered puncher’s gloves. Mayweather likes to wear Grant gloves because they are said to have more padding around the knuckles, and this is an area where he’s had problems in the past with his hands. As such, he wants to have as much protection as possible to protect his knuckles.

“Our gloves are made by machine in Mexico,” Roach said. “They’re the same all the time. They’re very standard. Top Rank has a warehouse full of them. They’ll grab 10 pair and we’ll pick our gloves from one of the 10.”

Roach likely won’t be any better off if he rejects Mayweather’s custom made Grant gloves because the replacements probably won’t be a better option because he could wind up with a pair with less padding around the knuckles instead of more, and that might not be good for Pacquiao because he was knocked out badly just three years ago by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. If Roach makes a big production out of Mayweather’s Grant gloves, it could lead to him winding up with gloves with less padding instead of more and that might be bad for Pacquiao.



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