By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach appears to be experiencing a state of delusions of grandeur after Manny Pacquiao’s recent win over Antonio Margarito last Saturday night at the Cowboy Boy Stadium. Instead of putting the win in perspective and realizing that Pacquiao beat a painfully slow, pumped up welterweight for the WBC junior middleweight paper title instead of a real junior middleweight like Paul Williams, Alfredo Angulo or James Kirkland, Roach is now saying that Pacquiao could even beat light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins. Boy, you give a guy a nice setup fight against a struggling fighter like Margarito and it really goes to their heads.

In an article atphilboxing.com, Roach said “After his [Hopkins] last fight [with Roy Jones Jr.], he should just shut up. In fact, Manny can beat him.” Wow, I think Roach is lost his senses completely judging by this comment. It’s one thing beating up a skinny fighter that throws wide, slow punches like Margarito, but it’s whole different ball game to beat a light heavyweight with a superior inside game like Hopkins. Since Roach isn’t the one that would have to risk his head getting hit by Hopkins, he needs to let Pacquiao do the talking about who can or can’t beat.

I don’t think Pacquiao can beat Hopkins, even though Hopkins is 45 and has declined somewhat in the past two years. I think Pacquiao would get bullied on the inside and broken down. If you thought that Margarito punished Pacquiao a lot, just imagine what Hopkins would do to him. It would be like watching some small guy get beaten up the playground. Of course, Hopkins would likely have to melt down some god awful catch-weight number like 154 for the fight with Pacquiao to happen. That may weaken Hopkins enough for Pacquiao to get a win, but if the fight were to happen at 160, forget it. Pacquiao takes a beating and Roach would be eating humble pie.

Roach, of course, is firing back at Hopkins because Bernard recently had the nerve to say that Floyd Mayweather Jr. would beat Pacquiao if they fought because of his fighting style. I think I agree with Hopkins. I think Mayweather easily beats Pacquiao because of his style of fighting and because of his great physical tools – fast hand speed and good power. I also think there’s other African American fighters that could beat Pacquiao, too. Timothy Bradley, Paul Williams and James Kirkland are three of them that I can think of on the top of my head.