By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach arrived in the Philippines on Satruday at General Santos City to start training former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) for his April 9 fight against Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Roach will be training the 37-year-old Pacquiao in the Philippines for the first half of his training camp. The second half will take place at Roach’s Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, California.
“I expect Manny to be at his best. I expect Manny to knock him out this time,” Roach said to philstar.com.
Pacquiao may need to KO Bradley because if he doesn’t, it go badly for him. Bradley already beat Pacquiao in their first fight in 2012, and was competitive with him in their second fight in 2014 while fighting his fight.
If Bradley goes back to the constantly moving style that he used in the first fight, he could very well defeat Pacquiao and send him into retirement off of a loss. That might not be good for Pacquiao because he plans on going into full time politics starting in May. The voters in the Philippines might not want to vote for Pacquiao if he loses his fight against Bradley. I could see Pacquiao losing a lot of votes if he gets beaten by Bradley because that would be his second consecutive defeat and he wouldn’t have his shoulder injury to blame his defeat on this time.
I am so happy giving these houses free to my constituents in Sarangani Province for more than thousand families. pic.twitter.com/iQFbqWPxXC
— Manny Pacquiao (@mannypacquiao) February 14, 2016
Of course, Pacquiao could always blame his defeat on another shoulder injury, but I think it would look suspicious to boxing fans. You can cry wolf each time you lose a fight.
You have to wonder whether Pacquiao will put in the hard work that he needs to in the first half of his training camp for this fight.
With Pacquiao running for a senate seat in the Philippines in May, it’s always possible that he could look to campaign during training camp in the Philippines. That’s not a good thing for Pacquiao to be training and campaigning at the same time. I could see Pacquiao being drained from his campaigning and not able to train as hard as he needs to in order to win the fight. Roach is concerned that Pacquiao will be able to do the hard work needed for him to get in shape.
Roach wants Pacquiao to win in an impressive fashion, but whether he can is the big question.
There’s some confusion as to whose ideas it was for Pacquiao to fight Bradley for a third time. While some boxing fans think it was the 84-year-old Bob Arum who made the decision to make a third fight between his two Top Rank stable fighters, other fans think it was Pacquiao that made the call.
Whoever it was, they blew it because the boxing world has been very, very cool to the fight. The fans are not excited at the thought of paying $70 to see Pacquiao fight Bradley for a third time, and the fight is likely to bring in the lowest PPV numbers for Pacquiao for quite some time. Pacquiao had the chance to fight Amir Khan or Adrien Broner, but either Pacquiao said no or Arum to the idea of fighting one of those guys.
Pacquiao is saying that he wants to KO Bradley in this fight. However, since Pacquiao hasn’t scored a knockout in second years since his stoppage win over Miguel Cotto in 2009, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be seeing a knockout. If anyone is going to be getting a knockout in this fight, I think it might be Bradley. I’m not sure what happened to Pacquiao’s punching power. Whatever it was, it’s just gone from 2009. He lost it overnight and I don’t think it’s going to come back for this fight.
“It’s the first time he brought that up to me, not me. He’s the first one to talk about a knockout this time,” said Roach.
Roach is positively gleeful about Pacquiao wanting to get a knockout for this fight. Never the less, that doesn’t mean a thing because the power that he once had appears to be completely gone since his last KO in 2009. Pacquiao’s power blew town after his stoppage win over Cotto, and I don’t think it’s ever coming back.
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