By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is up to his old tricks again by trying to upset yet another one of his fighter Manny Pacquiao’s opponents with his trash talking. Roach started off by making some recent comments where he said Pacquiao’s June 9th opponent Tim Bradley has a fighting style similar to Ricky Hatton, a 2nd round knockout victim to Pacquiao in May 2009.
Bradley didn’t like the idea of being compared to Hatton, and responded negatively to this comparison, and questioned Roach’s thought process. Roach, now seemingly enjoying that he’s upset Bradley, has upped his trash talk, saying to Ringtv “Bradley got mad when I sad that he’s no better than Ricky Hatton, but he’s never impressed me.”
Roach is obviously just trying to mess with Bradley’s head, because you can’t not be impressed with Bradley in seeing him fight. He easily took care of Lamont Peterson, who in turn made Roach’s fighter Khan look terrible in beating him last December. That loss really reflected on Roach badly because Khan showed no ability to fight on the inside, and that’s something that as Khan’s trainer Roach should have taken care of by now. Sending out a fighter without the skills to fight an inside fighter like Peterson was a real negative for Roach. He should be preparing his fighters, and Khan looked unprepared and desperate. Bradley is impressive and Roach would likely jump at the chance to train him if he opened his mouth and asked him.
Even if Roach isn’t impressed with Bradley, he will be after June 9th when Bradley gives Pacquiao fits. Roach can deny it, make excuses or come up with some kind of conspiracy to try and discredit Bradley’s win, but it’ll come down to some deficiency in Pacquiao’s game that will cause him to lose to Bradley. Something that Roach failed to teach Pacquiao, and he’ll take a lot of the heat for the loss if it’s something basic, like Pacquiao not being able to fight on the inside like Khan.
Comments are closed.