By Eric Thomas: Freddie Roach, the famous trainer of Manny Pacquiao, sees Joshua Clottey as a passive fighter, according to writer Nick Giongco of Tempo.com/ Roach says “Clottey is passive. Manny fights every second of every round and Clottey doesn’t do that. He just raises his arms.” I think what Roach is talking about with Clottey is that he often spends a considerable amount of time in every round just covering up and trying to block incoming fire. In that regards, Clottey’s style is much like Super Six tournament super middleweight contestant Arthur Abraham, who often spends much of every round just covering up and looking to block punches.

Abraham comes alive in the last thirty seconds of every round and often wins the round with a hard flurry of shots. In contrast, Clottey tends to shoot his fireworks off in the early part of each round and then looks to cover up and try to block shots after he tires out from his exertion. Abraham has big power in either hand. Clottey has moderately good power and needs to throw an accumulation of punches to get his opponents out of there.

Despite all that, Roach says “it is still going to be a hard ﬁght because Clottey is big and strong.” Clottey reportedly walks around at 175 pounds of mostly muscle. When he does have to get down to 147, he doesn’t have much of any fat to strip off, and because of that he takes off water weight to get down to the 147 pound limit.

Once the weigh-in is over, Clottey re-hydrates back up in weight and comes in bigger than many of his opponents. All fighters do this, but with Clottey is might seem more pronounced because his frame is mostly muscle. Ideally, Clottey might be better suited to fight at middleweight because of the amount of muscle on his frame, but at 5’8”, Clottey would be short for the middleweight division.