By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is now reportedly saying that he was merely joking when he was questioning how Juan Manuel Marquez had put on muscle weight recently for his fight with Roach’s fighter Manny Pacquiao.

Roach said this as quoted by Fighthype.com when asked to discuss his comments made earlier this week about Marquez’s muscles “I was just joking.”

In an interview earlier this week with usatoday.com Roach said about Marquez “If [Marquez’s body] is natural, I will kiss his a**.”

Roach should know better than to joke about the subject of performance enhancing drugs, especially given all the legal issues that his own fighter Manny Pacquiao has had with this subject involving Floyd Mayweather Jr. making comments about it. You would think that the last person to be making jokes on the subect would be Roach.

Bringing up PEDs before a big fight like Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez 4 isn’t a smart thing to do even if Roach was joking. That kind of thing turns off boxing fans and Roach probably doesn’t want that to happen. I’m sure he wants a lot of fans to purchase the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 fight in high numbers on pay per view. The idea is to hype the fight, not joke about how one of the fighters’ muscles growth is suspicious. I think Roach should think of other ways to joke then to be talking about this subject.

Pacquiao has got his work cut out for him against Marquez in this fight, and Roach should be trying to come up with a way for Pacquiao to win the fight and not be stuck with another decision that boxing fans don’t agree with. Pacquiao has lucked out in the three previous fights with Marquez, and clearly something isn’t working with Roach’s game plans for those fights. He needs to come up with something different.