Roach: I thought Mayweather ran very well; we want a rematch

By Boxing News - 05/03/2015 - Comments

Floyd Mayweather vs Manny PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: Like his fighter Manny Pacquiao, trainer Freddie Roach had few kind words to say about newly crowned WBO welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. last Saturday night following his mostly one-sided 12 round unanimous decision win over Pacquiao.

Roach says that Mayweather did a good job of running from Pacquiao, and that they want a rematch against him in September. Roach feels that Pacquiao was able to hurt Mayweather with some of his power shots in the fight even though it didn’t appear that way to the fans watching it.

Roach isn’t saying that Pacquiao was robbed of a decision, but he is saying that he feels that Pacquiao should have won a lot more rounds. Given that Mayweather won the fight by the scores of 118-110, 116-112 and 116-112 by the three judges, it would appear that Roach feels that Pacquiao either deserved to win the fight or get a draw.

“I thought he ran very well,” Roach said after the fight about Mayweather. “When he wasn’t throwing punches, he was just running and moving backwards and I feel Manny should have won a lot of those rounds because he was the aggressor. But it didn’t go that way.”

The problem with Pacquiao’s aggression is that it wasn’t effective aggression. When Mayweather wasn’t throwing punches, Pacquiao was coming forward, but he was missing a lot of his shots. Even when Pacquiao had Mayweather backed against the ropes, Pacquiao wasn’t able to land much of the time. He would throw a six to eight punch flurry at Mayweather with almost every punch missing badly.

The only shots that Pacquiao was able to land when he had Mayweather cornered against the ropes were body shots, and those were thrown after he’d missed a number of other punches. When judges see that kind of thing from a fighter, they’re not inclined to give them rounds. Pacquiao was putting a lot of dumb pressure on Mayweather but it wasn’t effective.

“I think he [Pacquiao] hurt his opponent,” Roach said. “It was a close fight. I hope we can do it again. I’m really proud of Manny. I thought he fought well.”

I don’t think it was a close fight, and I didn’t see Mayweather hurt by Pacquiao at all. I scored the fight 118-110 for Mayweather. That’s 9 rounds to 3. If you consider that close then that’s on you, but for me, that’s a one-sided fight. It wasn’t close and Pacquiao did not fight well. It worries me that Roach thinks Pacquiao fought well because he clearly didn’t. Pacquiao didn’t use angles when attacking Mayweather like he said he would. Instead, Pacquiao going straight up the middle over and over again. I’m not sure if it’s an age thing with Pacquiao not using angles last night or simply a case of him not being mentally astute enough to remember how he used to fight.

At any case, it’s Roach’s fault for not pushing Pacquiao to stop coming straight up the middle. That should have been the first adjustment Roach made after the 1st round when Pacquiao kept getting caught by Mayweather’s straight right hands while he was bum rushing him foolishly.

Mayweather wasn’t running from Pacquiao in the fight. Mayweather would move off the ropes occasionally to get back to the center of the ring, but that’s the only real movement he was doing. Mayweather wasn’t running in circles like he we see from some fighters in the sport. Instead he was moving just enough to get away from the ropes in order to take the action to the center of the ring. It was Pacquiao who couldn’t do anything to take advantage of Mayweather being a stationary target for much of the fight.

As far as a rematch goes between Mayweather and Pacquiao, Roach can pretty much forget about that because I don’t think it’s happening in this lifetime. The fight wasn’t close enough, and there’s probably more than a few angry fans about how one-sided it was. They expected Pacquiao to go out on his shield trying to win the fight, but instead he appeared to fight a safety first fight by pushing as hard as he could have for the victory.



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