By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is offering $1000 if his fighters Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Vanes Martirosyan and Amir Khan can knock Manny Pacquiao down in sparring in the Philippines. This has got to be the best sparring partners that a fighter could ever hope to get to help get ready for the Antonio Margarito bout on November 13th. But why so cheap? $1000 is nothing for Khan and Chavez. I think Roach needs to up that to $20,000, because those guys are used to making big bucks int their fights and waving $1000 under their noses may not get the desired effect that Roach wants.

Martirosyan has yet to make the big money, so he may go whole hog trying to put Pacquiao down but I can’t see Chavez or Khan wanting to stick their necks out for that small sum of money. Martirosyan used to be able to punch a little at the start of his pro career, but he’s become more of a punch and move fighter in the last couple of years and rarely sits down on his shots. I wonder if he can even load up on his shots anymore. He seems really wired towards moving and I never see that guy throw power shots anymore. He seems to have turned into a stiff-looking rabbit fighter.

What Roach really needs for this camp if he wants Pacquiao to be getting knocked around is to hire James Kirkland, Matt Korobov, Daniel Jacobs and David Lemieux to come to Pacquiao’s training camp and unload on him. I have a pretty good idea that Roach would stop paying out after giving away four or five thousand, because those guys would likely have Pacquiao hitting the deck on a regular basis. But then again, I couldn’t see them staying in camp because they might end up hurting Pacquiao. Chavez and Martirosyan can punch a little, but Korobov, Lemieux, Kirkland and Jacobs can punch a lot harder. It would obviously be closed door sparring sessions with those guys, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall to see Pacquiao getting hammered by them. That would be first class sparring.