By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach claims he didn’t see Floyd Mayweather Jr’s recent 12 round decision over former WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto last Saturday night, yet Roach said “Floyd’s slippery defense is now better outside the ring than inside the ring.” Obviously Roach Mayweather-Cotto fight and doesn’t want to admit it.
Roach is convinced that his fighter Manny Pacquiao, who just won a very, very controversial decision against Juan Manuel Marquez, would beat Mayweather if the two were to ever fight.
Roach said this when asked whether he thought Pacquiao could beat Mayweather: “You bet. The way to beat Floyd is to outwork him every minute of every round. Manny is the only fighter capable of executing that game plan. Activity kills Floyd. You need to stay busy against him and not let him dictate the pace by slowing down the fight.”
Well, Cotto tried to beat Mayweather with activity and it worked only for when Mayweather was willing to slug with him to try and prove a point. Once Mayweather stopped slugging and started boxing, Cotto had no chance and wasn’t able to land his shots due to his limited reach and foot movement.
It’ll be the same with Pacquiao, only that Mayweather won’t try and slug with him the way that he did with Cotto. Mayweather would use movement, and that would take away Pacquiao’s work rate entirely. I’m surprised that a professional trainer like Roach doesn’t already know this. He should know it, but it seems like he doesn’t because he spouting his nonsense about Pacquiao being able to outwork Mayweather by throwing a ton of punches. If this was the case then a fighter like Bernard Hopkins would lose every time he fought, because he’s not someone that can match the younger fighters’ work rate. What Hopkins does is use movement to slow the pace of the fight and limit the punch output of his opponents. He also uses clinching and wrestling on the inside to stifle his opponent’s offense. Mayweather would use the same kind of tactics against Pacquiao and never let him get his offense started.
Pacquiao would never beat a fighter like Mayweather because he would take advantage of all the opportunities that Pacquiao would be giving him by throwing a lot of counter punches each time Pacquiao would try and throw his flurries. I suspect Pacquiao would soon stop punching altogether in order to avoid having Mayweather hitting him with counter punches.
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