By Dave Lahr: Trainer Freddie Roach prides himself in his ability to dissect his fighter’s opponents and come up with a plan to beat them. Roach is usually blessed with talented fighters in matches that they are almost guaranteed to win even before the first punch is thrown. However, I think Roach is going to come up empty when and if his fighter Manny Pacquiao fights Floyd Mayweather Jr. “I’ve almost got the fight plan finished for Floyd,” Roach said in an article by Mike Marley of Examiner.com. “I have and it’s still the big fight that we want, that Manny wants. I know Manny can beat Floyd and maybe he is the only guy who can defeat Mayweather.”
That’s amusing, but I think Roach is whistling past the graveyard. I don’t care what plan Roach devises for Pacquiao, it’ll be completely neutralized by immediately and Roach’s great plans will go up in smoke. Pacquiao will then revert back to his wild, unschooled former fighting style where Pacquiao will be fighting one-armed, throwing nothing but wild left hands.
Mayweather will then start clocking Pacquiao short right hands and battering the stuffing out of him. I think Roach gives himself too many pats on the back for some of Pacquiao’s wins. Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto, Joshua Clottey and Oscar De La Hoya were all fighters that Pacquiao could beat in his sleep, no matter how he fought. Pacquiao beat those guys almost purely on his better physical tools along. It didn’t hurt him that in almost every case these fighters were coming off of recent losses and struggling.
Roach can come up with any plan he wants and handcuff Pacquiao with it, but Manny is going to be way over his head and unable to adapt quickly enough on the fly to beat Mayweather. Floyd is just too fast, too skilled and too superior in every facet of the game for Roach to come up with any kind of real plan to beat Mayweather. I pretty much have a good idea what Roach will have Pacquiao doing. He’s going to tell Pacquiao to put a lot of pressure on Mayweather, throw a lot of punches and try to overwhelm him. In other words, this will be essentially the same idea behind Pacquiao’s fight with Joshua Clottey last March.
I really hope Pacquiao does try and fight Mayweather the same way he fought Clottey. It’ll be fun to watch Mayweather lighting Pacquiao up again and again, snapping his head back every which way, blackening his eyes, cutting him up and basically making a mess up him. I can just see what a mess Roach would be in between roads. It would be like the captain of the Titanic watching helplessly as his ship sinks slowly into the cold Atlantic Ocean, and unable to do anything at all about it. I’m sure Roach probably would have a plan B, C, D, E and F, and not one of them will have much of any chance of working for his fighter.
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