By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach is hoping his fighter Manny Pacquiao will stop soon to be 40-year-old Shane Mosley in their mega fight next month on May 7th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. If this were a prime Mosley, Roach’s dream of a knockout would be all but impossible. Indeed, there would be a good chance that the fighter getting knocked out would be Pacquiao, not Mosley. However, Roach and company have done well to wait until Mosley is old and tired and not nearly the fighter he once was.

Mosley hasn’t won a fight in the past two years and looked dreadful in his last two fights against Sergio Mora and Floyd Mayweather Jr. With those terrible performances, Mosley was chosen to fight Pacquiao. And now Roach is eagerly looking forward to the fight hoping that Pacquiao can become the first fighter to stop Mosley so that this could be a feather that Pacquiao could stick in his cap. Pacquiao has recently captured the welterweight and junior middleweight titles, albeit with the help of a catch weight handicap to give Pacquiao and edge.

In their conference call today, Roach said “It would be incredible for Manny to be the first one to stop him and just prove to the world how much better he is than that guy [Mayweather] that couldn’t stop him. I think Manny will fight at a fast pace. I don’t know if he’ll be prepared to fight at that pace but we’re going to force the action.”

There is a better than average chance that Pacquiao is going to look unimpressive in beating Mosley. I see Pacquiao winning the fight, but that’s only because Mosley looks totally shot now. But it’s doubtful that Pacquiao will improve on Mayweather’s performance because Floyd put on a Picasso-esque performance in beating Mosley last year. Pacquiao is a lot more crude and tends to get hit a lot. He’s going to get hit and will struggle at times before Mosley runs completely out of gas by the 3rd round. If Roach really wanted to have something to brag about, he’d use his persuasion to get Pacquiao to fight Sergio Martinez instead. That would impress me, but then again I can’t see Roach ever doing that.