Roach waiting for Pacquiao to call for Mayweather rematch

By Boxing News - 05/25/2016 - Comments

Floyd Mayweather

By Allan Fox: Trainer Freddie Roach says he’s waiting to see what happens with former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao to see if he’ll come back to the sport for one more fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. to that he can avenge his loss to him. According to Roach, Mayweather has twice come to his gym recently without saying about a rematch against Pacquiao.

Roach thinks it’s sort of unusual that Mayweather is turning up his Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, California after all this time. Roach would like more than anything to have Mayweather fight Pacquiao a second time because he believes a healthy Pacquiao would have a good chance of beating him.

Pacquiao re-injured his right shoulder in the 4th round of his fight against Mayweather last May. Fighting with only one arm, Pacquiao suffered a 12 round decision defeat. Roach feels that the fight would have been a winnable one had the injury not occurred. Mayweather-Pacquiao was a huge success in pay-per-view with it producing 4.6 million buys and grossing $600 million.

“Very unusual now how Mayweather’s been here twice,” Roach said to Lance Pugmire at the LA Times. “He wanted to watch sparring the other day. I wasn’t here. But the first time he came by, he came upstairs and saw me. Very nice talk, yes. Me and him are OK.”

Pacquiao was recently voted into the senate in the Philippines for a six-year hitch. He might not have the time to come back for one more fight, especially now that he’s trying to learn his new job. If Pacquiao were to take a break from his senatorial job right now to come back for a rematch against Mayweather, he might not be able to focus entirely on the fight the way he needs to in order to have a chance of winning. You could imagine that Pacquiao would be highly distracted as he trained because he would have phone calls to make for his senatorial job and a lot of pressure on him.

Mayweather has talked recently about wanting to fight UFC champion Conor McGregor in a boxing event that could take place on September 17 if the two of them are able to negotiate a fight between them. However, with each of them wanting $100 million for the match, it doesn’t look like it’s too realistic that the fight can get made.

There probably isn’t going to be a $200 million money pot for the two to fight over unless one of the cable networks is willing to take a loss on the fight by guaranteeing a lot of money to them. If Showtime winds up televising the Mayweather-McGregor fight, they would very likely capture a lot of new subscribers to their network. That’s a positive. With the addition of new IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua to Showtime, they could keep many of the new subscribers.

“They’ll call me and let me know what’s going to happen,” Roach said. “Manny and [his manager Michael] Koncz both told me after the last fight that they do feel strongly about trying to get Mayweather one more time. I think that’s the only fight he’d come back for. He could come back for Canelo [Alvarez], too, but he’s not as big a draw as Mayweather-Pacquiao II. One more fight, I would like to see it, but does he have time to do it as a senator? I’m sure there’s a lot more work to do. But I know he has at least one more [fight] in him. He showed flashes of the old Manny last fight.”

Roach is underestimating the kind of interest a fight between Pacquiao and Canelo would generate in the sport. It might be a bigger fight than a rematch between Pacquiao and Mayweather.

Canelo has a large Mexican fan base that would be highly motivated to purchase a fight between him and Pacquiao on PPV on HBO. Canelo has a history of being involved in exciting fights, and he’s not going to play it safe against Pacquiao the way that Mayweather did. Above all, the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight last year might have burned bridges with too many boxing fans for a second fight between them to be viable at this point.

Mayweather and Pacquiao didn’t make things better by playing it safe in their last fights by taking on aging fighters that were clearly underdogs in the fight in Andre Berto and Tim Bradley.

Pacquiao had the option of fighting Terence Crawford, but instead he chose the safe bet in fighting Bradley for a second time. Mayweather had the option of fighting Gennady Golovkin or Danny Garcia, and he opted to fight Berto in a fight that turned out to be one-sided and dull.

Roach may need to lean on Pacquiao if he wants him to make a comeback to fight Mayweather because right now it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen without him being pressured. Even if Pacquiao wants the fight, there’s no telling whether he’ll be able to get it.

If Mayweather wants an easy mark for his next fight against a guy with no boxing experience in McGregor, then Pacquiao could be wasting his time in showing interest in fighting Mayweather a second time.

It’s thought by some that a second fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao won’t be the same jackpot as thier first fight was in May of 2015, but it could bring in half the number of PPV buys at 2.3 million. That’s a number that Mayweather and Pacquiao would have to be content with. The purse split between them last time was 60-40 in favor of Mayweather. That split would likely need to move to either 55-45 or 50-50 for a second fight to take place. Pacquiao reportedly wasn’t happy at taking the much smaller money while helping make the fight such a huge success. Pacquiao just wanted to make the fight happen, which is why he gave in to the lower number. Right now, Pacquiao doesn’t need the fight. It would be Mayweather that would need a second fight more than him because he’s got a job to focus on right now in the Philippines.