By Allan Fox: The Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao fight was just announced on Friday by Mayweather and already Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is dreaming of Pacquiao scoring a stoppage win over Mayweather to become the first fighter to beat him.
Mayweather announced the fight on his social media site Shots during the late afternoon on Friday. Mayweather and Pacquiao will be fighting on May 2nd in a pay-per-view broadcast on HBO and Showtime.
The fighters will face each other at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The bout could bring both fighters more than $100 million each.
Roach has been looking forward to pitting Pacquiao against Mayweather for years because he’s always felt that he could come up with the perfect game plan for Pacquiao to beat him.
Roach is finally going to get his wish after having waited for six years for the fight to take place.
“Floyd should enjoy being the ‘A’ side while he can because on May 2 Manny is going to put him on his backside,” Roach said via the latimes.com.
If Pacquiao can defeat Mayweather, it’ll make Roach come out as a genius, and it’ll likely help Roach in bringing in other fighters wanting to be trained by him. That’s how it goes in boxing. When a popular fighter picks up a big win, the trainer for that fighter typically gets a number of talented fighters wanting to be trained by him.
It’ll definitely make Roach look good, as if he’s the mastermind behind Pacquiao’s success. Beating Mayweather won’t be an easy task though, and Roach will need to come up with a great plan for Pacquiao to succeed.
If his only idea for Pacquiao is to throw a lot of punches and pressure Mayweather constantly, it might not work. Pacquiao is going to need a plan-B, C, and possible D to get Pacquiao past Mayweather.
“What the world has been waiting for has arrived. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao on May 2, 2015, is a done deal. I promised the fans we would get this done, and we did. We will make history on May 2nd. Don’t miss it! This is the signed contract from both fighters,” Mayweather said on his Shots social media account on Friday.
It’s a good thing for both Mayweather and Pacquiao that they were able to negotiate the fight, because if they hadn’t been able to this time, boing fans would have responded by shying away from their fights in order show their displeasure with them. Mayweather might have ended up taking the brunt of the blame because a lot of boxing fans have blamed him for the two of them never having fought each other until now.
Mayweather is a 2 to 1 favorite as of now over Pacquiao. This is interesting because Pacquiao has looked really good as of late in his wins over Chris Algieri, Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios.
Pacquiao shined in those fights and fought better than Mayweather did in his recent back to back wins over Marcos Maidana. This is still going to be a very, very tough fight for Mayweather despite him being the favorite. He could very well lose unless he fights a disciplined fight and avoids staying in the pocket for too long of a time.
“It’s hasn’t been easy,” Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told ESPN.com. “But I think in some strange way the inability to get the fight done before now enhances its value and this is one event that the public all over the world has been talking about and discussing for years. The interest in the fight will be absolutely red-hot.
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