roach34253 By Manuel Perez: Just when I thought the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton 24/7 series couldn’t have gotten worse, I had to watch another dull installment, episode #3, which aired last Saturday night. It seemed that that the HBO film crew were to desperate for footage, they actually wasted time in filming Hatton, Mayweather Sr. and their entourage sitting down and watching the Pacquiao-Hatton 24/7 episode #2 special. The viewers had to sit by and watch how Hatton and Mayweather Sr. laughed at seeing themselves on film.

What a total waste of time. My hand was on the channel changer almost immediately by instinct alone and I had to fight the urge to flip to something more interesting to watch.

Next, there was footage of Mayweather Sr’s paintings, which weren’t all that bad, I couldn’t piece together the relevance to this Saturday’s fight and saw it as more boring garbage that should have never made it on film, much less onto the actual Pacquiao-Hatton 24/7 episode #3.

If there was any redeeming value in the entire show, it was that they brought on Roger Mayweather, Floyd Sr’s brother, who has a lot of charisma and is funny as heck to watch. Then guy should have been an actor because it was incredibly funny when Roger was talking about Pacquiao, saying in effect if Ricky can’t beat a fighter as small as Pacquiao, then Hatton needs to give his uniform and boxing gear to Roger, and he’ll take the stuff and pour gasoline over it and burn it.

It was a great footage and was pretty much the highlight of the entire show. Mayweather Sr. discussed his lung problem, and we had Hatton showing concern for him at one point when Mayweather Sr. coughed a couple of times, but it didn’t make me want to order the fight on PPV, and I saw no reason for it to be included onto the episode.

In its place, I would have preferred to see more of Hatton sparring, training or discussing some fight strategies for Saturday night. Heck, I’d settle for Hatton talking about some of his old fights, in particular his loss to Mayweather Jr., and how things will be different this time out.

Obviously, the HBO 24/7 film crew would need to help out by nudging Hatton into talking about these kinds of things, but that’s why they’re in charge of the show. The director needed to step up to the plate and start putting these people through their paces.

I was totally happy that there was less Freddie Roach and Michael Moorer in this episode. I overdosed on watching Roach talk about his grand ideas about Pacquiao in the last two episodes and I could only take so much of his predictions why Pacquiao would beat Hatton.

After awhile, he was like a broken record and I couldn’t stomach it. Besides that, he seems too into his part in Pacquiao’s success and that’s really boring. I hate when people gloat and I saw him gloating like crazy at Pacquiao’s success. Moorer seemed to be uptight in front of the camera and came across as wooden and unnatural. It was best that he not be shown because he seemed not real with the camera on him.

I did like the part in episode #3 where Mayweather Sr. was describing to a group of reporters Pacquiao’s fighting style, telling them that Pacquiao comes running forward throwing his punches straight in front of him. Mayweather then said, “Man, that’s amateur.”

Yeah, I agree completely with Mayweather on that observation. I don’t see how a professional fighter can run forward and throw punches straight ahead without something bad happening. I guess it shows the type of fighters that Pacquiao has fought in his career that he’s been able to get away with that kind of amateurish fighting, because it didn’t work against Juan Manuel Marquez.

Then there was footage of Pacquiao in a church, which was okay in itself, but not even close to being interesting for the viewers like myself. The objective for the HBO team is to attract viewer eyeballs, and not turn them off by boring them to tears.

That’s why this should have been edited out and left on the floor. Pacquiao later went to a San Francisco Giants baseball game, where he threw out the first pitch. What it had to do with this Saturday night’s fight is beyond me, and I thought, ‘Wow, what next? Perhaps Pacquiao taking a trip to Alcatraz Island on the local ferry or a trip under the Golden Gate Bridge and back to Pier 1. Useless footage and not needed.

The film crew then went to the Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, where we got to see Roach playing the heavy by tossing people out of his gym so that Pacquiao could do some private training. Roach was totally meek in throwing them out, and I would have liked to see him raise his voice above a whisper to kick them out. Better yet, I would have preferred to see Moorer step in and angrily heard the people out as a group.

What we needed here was some emotion, something to get the viewers interested in what they were watching. Instead, we got more of the typical boring show that we’d been getting. By this point, the show was in dire need of someone with some charisma to bring some life to it.

Instead, we got more of Roach, talking with a gleam in his eye about how he let the HBO film crew stay in order to show Pacquiao’s knockouts of his sparring partners. As Roach tells it, he seems to think this will put the fear into Hatton by watching Pacquiao beat up some of these guys. I bet. It seemed a little self serving to me.