By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach, the trainer for both Amir Khan and Manny Pacquiao, says he doesn’t want the two fighters ever to meet in the ring, according to the Daily Star. Roach points to Khan and Pacquiao’s close friendship as the reason why Roach wants to try and keep the two from ever fighting. Although it’s ultimately up to Pacquiao and Khan, since after all Roach is nothing more than a trainer, but Pacquiao looks up to Roach and follows what he says to the letter.
It’s too bad, because effectively removes one of the biggest opportunities Khan has to get a big fight before he’s likely beaten into the sunset by getting destroyed by one of his future opponents. Roach only wants Pacquiao to fight two more times and then get out of the sport altogether, which I think is another bad piece of advice from Roach.
The way Pacquiao’s fighting, he could likely get another 12 fights out of him before Pacquiao runs into problems around 36. Pacquiao should at least hang around as long as Kostya Tszyu, and try to get the most out of his career.
It isn’t like Pacquiao is taking a lot of punishment because he’s been the one dishing out the beatings since Pacquiao fought Oscar De La Hoya last year. If it was me, I’d tactically blow Roach off and set up a fight with Khan through my promoter. If Roach doesn’t like it, oh well, that’s how the cookies crumble.
Pacquiao is talented enough to succeed no matter whom he’s trained by, so if Roach gets his panties in a bunch over Pacquiao wanting to fight Khan, then I say give the man his walking papers and hunt down another trainer like Floyd Mayweather Sr. or Emanuel Steward. That would really piss off Roach I bet if Pacquiao opted to take Mayweather Sr. as his trainer.
But in this case, I think Pacquaio would find a lot of success with Mayweather Sr. because he would actually follow his advice if he were his trainer and wouldn’t just go out and carry out his own plan of attack in a fight.
Beyond a fight with Khan, which I would take in a second if I were Pacquiao, there are other fighters for Pacquiao like Mayweather Jr., Edwin Valero, Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley. After Pacquiao gets down with them, hopefully some other fighters have emerged to fight.
Right now, there are not a whole lot of big named fighters for Pacquiao to fight unless he wants to go after lesser opponents and I doubt he does. Mosley is getting old, so if Pacquiao doesn’t want to lose that shot of beating him, Pacquiao needs to go after Mosley before he ages out of boxing.
Valero is fighter that could get beaten at any time due to his marginal boxing skills, and slow hand speed, so he’s another fighter that Pacquiao needs to go after soon or else lose the chance of fighting Valero. Cotto will be around for awhile because he’s young, so I wouldn’t fight him right now.
Let Cotto beat a few more fighters and once Pacquiao is done with Khan, Mosley and Valero, then go after Cotto and beat him.
As for Roach, I would tell him to keep his yap closed about who I want to fight in the future. If Roach has it his way, Pacquiao will end up packing it in way too soon as far as I’m concerned. If Pacquiao wants to be a real friend to Khan, he could do nothing better than to fight him so that Khan could get a huge payday.
It doesn’t matter that Khan would be knocked out in the 1st or 2nd round, because he would be paid well for his troubles.
Comments are closed.