By Esteban Garduno: In the latest boxing news, Freddie Roach believes that Joshua Clottey tried to quit in his last fight against Miguel Cotto last June in a fight that Clottey lost by a 12 round split decision. Roach isn’t shy about making himself heard, as you can see.

For a trainer, I think Roach talks even more than many of the top fighters, maybe even more than Floyd Mayweather Jr. Contrary to what Roach says about Clottey quitting in the Cotto fight, I think he’s wrong on that. Clottey appeared to run out of gas like he often does in the late rounds. It was all he could do to cover up and lean against the ropes in the last two rounds against Cotto.

You could see how tired Clottey was because he was breathing through his mouth and had his mouth open gasping for breaths. Clottey just looked exhausted. This is the same problem he had in his fight with Antonio Margarito in 2006. Clottey faded after the 5th round and ended up losing the fight by a 12 round decision. He fought well in the first five rounds, but then did next to nothing in the 2nd half of the fight.

Clottey is upset with Roach and his constant needling of Clottey, especially with Roach making predictions of Pacquiao knocking Clottey out. This clearly bothers Clottey, because he’s never been stopped before, and Roach is predicting quicker and quicker knockouts as the days draw closer to the fight. If Clottey was smart, he’d ignore Roach and understand what he’s trying to do.

Roach is trying to promote the fight by giving good quotes to the media, but the same time he’s hoping that this minor form of trash talking will anger Clottey and get into his head. It appears to be working, and that’s disappointing for Clottey. By now, he should understand what Roach is doing. After all, Roach does the same thing with every Pacquiao opponent. However, Roach isn’t going to be the one in the ring on Saturday night, so Clottey needs to focus on Pacquiao and shut out Roach and other noise in the background that might distract him from his task.

This is par for the course for him. The proof will be in the pudding. Pacquiao has beaten three straight big named opponents to get to this point, but he’s not beyond criticism because his opponents – Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto – weren’t at their best at the time that Pacquiao fought them, and this was talked about before he stepped in the ring, not after.

And recently, Pacquiao could have fought Shane Mosley or Floyd Mayweather Jr., but instead bypassed the Mosley bout to fight Cotto, and didn’t fight Mayweather because Pacquiao and his team couldn’t negotiate a fight with Mayweather due to Floyd wanting random blood tests to be taken before he would fight Pacquiao.