By Chris Williams: You got to like Freddie Roach. He makes the same knockout predictions for his fighter Manny Pacquiao fight after fight, not matter who Pacquiao is facing. It’s always a knockout prediction and generally Roach starts with a late knockout prediction and inches it downwards as the fight nears.

This time, however, Roach is going in the opposition direction, starting with a 6th round knockout prediction for Pacquiao over Juan Manuel Marquez on November 12th. Knowing Roach, this will likely change. I wonder how long it will take for Roach to get down to a 1st round knockout? My guess is by November, Roach will have whittled it down to a 1st round KO for Pacquiao.

Roach told the Philippine Star “I think Marquez showed disrespect to Manny by coming to the Philippines with his followers and claiming he was robbed in both fights. It was a slap on Manny’s face. It wasn’t right to do that and what made it worse was Marquez did it in the Philippines…Manny will win by knockout.”

What does Roach expect Marquez to do? Does he want him to lie and say he didn’t beat Pacquiao in both of those fights? Pretty much everyone – other than Pacquiao fans – saw Marquez winning both of the fights with Pacquiao in 2004 and 2008. Roach may not like it that Pacquiao looked so awful and was exposed by Marquez in those fights, but that’s what happened. So Roach wanted Marquez to keep his mouth shut about this when he was visiting the Philippines. Why should he? I guess it pains Roach to see Marquez talking about it.

After all, Roach trained Pacquiao for both fights and he was really lacking in boxing fundamentals in both of those bouts in terms of defensive liabilities and an inability to punch with his right hand. Roach has finally after all these years fixed Pacquiao’s right hand problem, but he’s still getting hit an awful lot, meaning Roach has a lot of work still to do with Pacquiao’s defensive flaws.