By Dave Lahr: Freddie Roach, as usual, is predicting a knockout win for his fighter Manny Pacquiao against two-time welterweight champion Antonio Margarito. It’s almost become a given that Roach will be predicting knockout wins for Pacquiao every time he fights somebody. In Roach’s latest prediction, he says in an article at ABS-cbsnews, “Manny will knock him out.” My question is why, if Roach thinks Pacquiao is going to knock Margarito out, did Roach agree to have Pacquiao fight Margarito?

If Roach is predicting yet another knockout win, why fight Margarito? I imagine there has to be a number of fighters out there that Roach thinks Pacquiao couldn’t knockout, right? Why isn’t Roach standing up on his hind legs and having Pacquiao fight these guys instead of ones that he always thinks Pacquiao can knockout. Is that cherry picking?

Does Roach think that Pacquiao knockout every fighter or just the ones that are matched against him? I’d like to see whether Roach thinks that Pacquiao can knockout Sergio Martinez, Paul Williams, Dmitry Pirog or Alfredo Angulo. Since Pacquiao is fighting for the junior middleweight title in November, why wasn’t Williams, Angulo or Martinez selected instead of Margarito? Is it because Roach doesn’t think Pacquiao could knock them out?

I agree with Roach about his prediction about Margarito and Pacquiao, but I don’t see it as a sporting fight. Margarito looks nothing like he used to be two years ago. I don’t know what happened to him, but he looked like someone else in his loss to Shane Mosley last year and he looked equally bad in his win over Roberto Garcia in his last fight in May.

Margarito’s once big power is gone and he’s now trying to change into a boxer. That isn’t going to work and why do it now? I think Pacquiao will knock Margarito out, but I also think so would Martinez, Angulo, Pirog and Williams. Big deal. Why isn’t Pacquiao being matched up against better fighters than Margarito, Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey?

I don’t see them as being comparable fighters to Martinez, Williams, Pirog and Angulo. But I also don’t ever see Margarito, Pacquiao or Cotto fighting those guys. They’ll fight each other, but not those guys. I’d like to see any of them take those fights now. Margarito tried fighting Williams in the past, but he lost. But I want to see Pacquiao fight someone good and not a fighter that was stopped recently like Margarito.