Roach to start training Pacquiao on February 14 in Philippines

By Boxing News - 02/08/2016 - Comments

pac3366By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach will be flying over the Philippines on February 14 to start training Manny Pacquiao in General Santos for his fight against Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) on April 9 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao and Bradley are knotted up at 1-1 in the two fights they’ve had with each other. Pacquiao wants to break that tie and end his career and his Bradley series with a victory.

It’s probably not the smartest thing for Pacquiao to do in choosing to train in the Philippines, where he’ll have tons of distractions from boxing fans. He’s also running for a political seat in the senate in an election in May.

You have to wonder whether Pacquiao is looking to kill two birds with one stone by campaigning for the senate spot while also training for the Bradley fight.

If that’s what Pacquiao is planning on doing, then he should have told Roach that he wants the entire training camp in the Philippines rather than just half of it.

“Freddie [Roach] will be arriving here in General Santos on the 14th of February to supervise Manny’s training and evaluate his present fighting condition,” Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz said to the manilatimes.net. “We are all confident that Pacquiao will win that fight. We always believe in his capability,” Koncz said.

I think Pacquiao isn’t focused like he needs to be for this training camp. Pacquiao has a lot of stuff going on in his life, and I don’t think he’s going to be dedicating himself in this training camp like he needs to for him to beat Bradley. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pacquiao is playing basketball nightly while in training camp. The results will be we’re likely see a tired out Pacquiao going through the motions in training camp rather than being fresh enough to get some quality time in camp.

“We are going to be strict during the course of his training. We are always strict when it comes to Manny’s training,” said Koncz.

I wonder what great ideas Roach has for Pacquiao to use in the Bradley fight. My guess is he’ll have Pacquiao attacking Bradley like he was a 25-year-old rather than a 37-year-old. This will be the same battle plan that Roach had Pacquiao use in his fourth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. For those boxing fans who may not remember that fight, Pacquiao was knocked out cold in the 6th round after he ran straight into a right hand from Marquez. Pacquiao fought like a 25-year-old, to be sure, but a 25-year-old who didn’t seem to have any senses at all. Pacquiao fought his worst fight in years, and was dropped twice. After that fight, I felt that it would have been a good idea for Pacquiao to dump Roach and some of his other training team. I think Pacquiao should have taken a big broom and swept his entire training team out of the gym, including Buboy Fernandez, his helper. Pacquiao could have started from scratch with a new training team that had some real ideas to help him.



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