By Dave Lahr: Recently, trainer Freddie Roach has been repeating over and over again that Floyd Mayweather’s legs are gone, and that he’s become more flat footed compared to the way he used to fight. I looked at the Shane Mosley fight, which is where Roach formed his opinion about Mayweather’s lack of movement, and I think Mayweather looked as good as he always does. I noticed he wasn’t moving quite as much, but that was only because Mosley was moving so slowly. Mayweather had a perfect opponent in front of him and without any real pressure from Mosley, Mayweather didn’t have to move to stay away from him.
Besides this, Mayweather was the one attacking in that fight. I think Roach is trying to mess with Mayweather to get him doubting himself so that Roach’s fighter Manny Pacquiao can gain a small edge. It won’t work. Mayweather is too skilled for that and even if Roach did put some doubt into Mayweather’s head about his lack of movement, he would still literally dance circles around Pacquiao. Mayweather is just fighting on too high of a level and no matter what Roach says to try and psyche him out, it won’t work well enough for Pacquiao do get any benefit.
What Roach needs to be doing is trying to teach Pacquiao how to block some shots with his gloves, because he did a rotten job of picking off punches in his last fight with Joshua Clottey. I haven’t see Pacquiao take so many clean shots since he fought Juan Manuel Marquez. It was really ugly. When you look at what Clottey was able to do with Pacquiao, and then think of what Mayweather do, it’s downright scary. Roach needs to get on his J-O-B and try to teach Pacquiao how to defend himself better because he’s going to have some serious issues if he gets in the ring with Mayweather. I thought Clottey was going to lift Pacquiao’s head off his body with some of those uppercuts he was nailing Pacquiao with.
I can see Mayweather’s gloves tattooed to Pacquiao’s face all night long and Roach coming unglued in the corner between rounds, jabbering six bits to a dozen with all kinds of advice – way more than Pacquiao can take in at one time. Roach should work on his fighter’s defense and also try to make some headway with the blood testing issue. There won’t be a fight unless they come to some kind of agreement with Mayweather this time. Mayweather is looking really right now and I think he’s in a position to call the shots for whatever he wants.
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