Roach thinks Pacquiao-Mayweather fight will happen in 2015

By Boxing News - 11/28/2014 - Comments

pac0000By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach thinks WBO 147lb champion Manny Pacquiao’s win over little known Chris Algieri (20-1, 8 KOs) on November 22nd was a big enough victory to get Pacquiao a big money fight against WBA/WBC 147 pound champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs).

Roach thinks that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will be able to set the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight up in 2015 despite the fact that Mayweather has said repeatedly that he won’t fight Pacquiao has Juan Manuel Marquez problems, and that he wouldn’t fight him until he’s clear of Arum.

“I’ve been talking to Bob Arum,” Roach said via thesweetscience.com. “And with Manny calling Floyd out, I think it’s going to happen. It’s perfect timing. Manny looked good in his fight [against Algieri], Floyd looked just OK [in his two wins over Marcos Maidana], and Floyd has no one else to fight! He had to fight Maidana twice. Arum told me he is going to push real hard.”

There’s a huge difference in talent between the guy that Mayweather faced in Maidana compared to the feather-fisted, stork-like Algieri who Pacquiao just beat. Mayweather faced the far superior fighter of the two. Algieri is a decent fringe contender at 140, but let’s not get confused here. He’s not a great fighter at 140, and the only reason he got the fight against Pacquiao is because Arum thought that boxing fans would be intrigued at the idea of Pacquiao fighting someone with a Master’s degree. Arum obviously made a huge blunder in picking out Algieri as Pacquiao’s opponent, because I’m betting the fight likely brought in less than 400,000 pay-per-view buys.

Mayweather isn’t going to waste his time fighting Pacquiao until he proves he can beat a quality fighter like Marquez without controversy or beat someone else that is considered a good fighter.

As it is, Pacquiao hasn’t beaten a quality guy since his win over Miguel Cotto back in 2009, and even that win was tainted due to the fight taking place at a catch-weight.
Pacquiao is likely going to have to be happy fighting Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Jessie Vargas, Ruslan Provodnikov or Terence Crawford in 2015. I believe that’s about as good as it gets for the soon to be 36-year-old Pacquiao.

I really wasn’t impressed with Pacquiao’s win over Algieri. Out of all the knockdowns that Pacquiao scored in the fight, I only counted two of them as being legitimate. The rest were slips. The referee didn’t let Algieri throw to the body, as he was counting belt line shots as low blows for some reason, but then failing to call Pacquiao when he would throw the same blows.



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