Roach had no plan-B; should Pacquiao dump him?

By Boxing News - 05/03/2015 - Comments

1-11-6By Chris Williams: If you purchased last Saturday night’s mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) and Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) on PPV or were lucky enough to see it live, you’ll have noticed how lost Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach was in the corner between rounds.

As the fight become increasingly more one-sided with things become desperate, Roach had no answers, no plan-B, and no advice for the 36-year-old Pacquiao to help him adapt to what Mayweather was doing inside the ring. In a word, Roach was lost.

After all the bragging about his so-called secret fight strategy that he had for Pacquiao that would lead to a victory over Mayweather, what we saw instead was the same old Pacquiao we’d been watching for the past 20 years. The main difference though is that Pacquiao didn’t even look as good as he was when he was a novice in 1995.

If you take a look at some of the video of Pacquiao’s first fights as a pro, you’ll notice that he was a lot better when he first started out then he’s looked in many years. That tells me that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed.

I know Pacquiao is a loyal guy and all, but I can’t help thinking that it might be time for him to consider dumping Roach and looking to get a different outlook from a new trainer like Virgil Hunter or Robert Garcia. I think those two are the best in the business right now, and I could see Pacquiao learning a lot of stuff with them. Believe, those trainers would have had a plan-B, C, D, E and F for Pacquiao last night if things weren’t going well for him against Mayweather.

Of course, I don’t think either of them would have signed off for a fight if Pacquiao had an injured right shoulder like what he’s been talking about. The difference I think between Hunter and Garcia compared to Roach is that they would make sure that Pacquiao would follow their game plans.

It would be a much different Pacquiao than the ones we’ve been seeing because Garcia and Hunter go over stuff repeatedly to make sure their fighters have learned it, and are able to apply what they learned inside the ring. I’m not sure if that’s the case with Roach because Pacquiao made no adjustments last night and just kept doing the same thing round after round without showing any sign that he was following a different game plan.

I believe that Roach only had one plan for Pacquiao last night and when that plan went south, all he could do was keep jabbering over and over again to keep pressuring Mayweather. There was nothing new.

It would be interesting to see how well Pacquiao would look with a fresh start with a different trainer. We’ve seen that Hunter has worked wonders with turning around the career of Khan after he left Roach, and it might be possible for Pacquiao to do the same thing. If Pacquiao were to go into his training camp with a big broom, and just sweep out all the guys that’s got on his team, I’m talking everyone, and then start from scratch with a new trainer, new strength guy, new assistant helper an a new personal assistant, I think Pacquiao might be able to accomplish some things and turn his career around.



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