By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is ecstatic over the performance of his fighter Manny Pacquiao (55-5-2, 38 KO’s) after his 12 round unanimous decision win over tune-up fighter Brandon Rios last Saturday night in the tax-friendly Macao, China. Pacquiao won the fight easily, and it’s got Roach thinking that he’s good enough to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr., if he could only get him to agree to fight Pacquiao.
Roach thinks Mayweather Jr. has gotten slower recently, and he sees Pacquiao using the the previously tested Roach strategy of trying to overwhelm Mayweather with punches to beat him. It’s a failure of a strategy because all of Mayweather’s try the same thing against him and it always fails, but Roach thinks it’ll work.
Roach said via abc-cbnnews “That’s the fight the world wants to see. Mayweather in his last two fights has been slow. He doesn’t move as much as he used to. I think Manny’s speed will overwhelm him. Mayweather is not good against southpaws, and he has trouble with speed.”
Roach is right about this being the fight that the boxing world wants to see, but it’s also a fight that still needs to marinate more before it can happen. Pacquiao needs to stop fighting light welterweights and lightweights and face an actual top 10 welterweight contender to prove that he deserves a fight with Mayweather, because right now Pacquiao’s last two fights have come against a light welterweight in Juan Manuel Marquez and a guy that just moved up to the 140 lb. division from lightweight in Rios. Pacquiao needs to step up and start facing quality opposition, and I’m not talking about Tim Bradley.
Roach needs to fight guys that would destroy Bradley like Adrien Broner, Devon Alexander, Keith Thurman or even Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. If Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum isn’t wily enough to get those fights for Pacquiao, then Pacquiao doesn’t deserve a fight with Mayweather, because those three guys that Pacquiao should fight and beat in order to earn a fight with Mayweather.
I might add Miguel Cotto’s name, but Roach has been saying that Pacquiao and Cotto are friends now and that he doesn’t want them to fight. The only way that fight would take place is at a catch-weight of 150, and I seriously doubt Pacquiao would agree to that because he’d be facing a full strength Cotto instead of a weight drained version like the one he beat in 2009.
If Pacquiao were to try and overwhelm Mayweather with punches like he did against Marquez, we’d see a similar result with Pacquiao face down on the canvas counting z’s.
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