By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach badly wants his fighter Manny Pacquiao to make a statement next month in their fight against the struggling 39-year-old Shane Mosley by knocking him out and putting on a better performance than the one that Floyd Mayweather Jr. did when beating up Mosley last year. Pacquiao, once again, is fighting one of Mayweather’s leftover opponents if for no other reason than he has a recognizable name to the public and to try and top what Mayweather did to Mosley.

You can throw out the window any notion of this bout being a competitive fight. Mosley wasn’t competitive against Mayweather and following that fight, Mosley struggled to get a draw against fringe contender Sergio Mora. I had Mora easily beating Mosley by four rounds. But Roach wants that knockout win for his fighter Pacquiao to prove something. I don’t know what you can prove by beating a fighter only a step away from 40 like Mosley and who hasn’t won a fight in over two long years.

Where is the victory in knocking out someone this old? Roach wants Pacquiao to be the first guy to knock Mosley out but what will that mean? Mosley isn’t in his 20s anymore and there is little chance that Pacquiao would knock out a prime Mosley. This is like guys knocking out Roy Jones Jr. now that he’s gotten old. No one was knocking out Jones in his prime. Heck, no one was beating, period. Jones was beating everyone. The same applies but to a slightly lesser extent with Mosley. He only had problems against taller fighters in his prime like Vernon Forrest and Winky Wright. Mosley always did well against shorter fighters and Pacquiao would be one of his smaller opponents if they were to have fought back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Roach says “We are going to force the action and go for it [the knockout] this time.” I’d much prefer to see Pacquiao and Roach going after a younger fighter that is still relevant like Sergio Martinez. Why isn’t Pacquiao fighting him instead of guys like Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and now Mosley?