By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach thinks that one of the reasons why Pacquiao has stopped getting knockouts in the last six years is that his testosterone levels might be lower than they were during the prime of his career.
The lower blood hormone levels of testosterone would help explain why Pacquiao has lacked the “killer instinct” and has played it too nice with his opponents during the last half decade.
It’s no secret that Pacquiao’s last recorded knockout was way back in 2009 when he stopped Miguel Cotto in the 12th round.
Besides the low testosterone theory, Roach has also come up with other theories why Pacquiao’s knockouts have dried up. Roach says that Pacquiao is fighting in the wrong division, and that if he were fighting at light welterweight, his power would be better.
Roach says Pacquiao isn’t a natural welterweight and that explains his lack of knockouts from 2009 to 2015. Roach also thinks that Pacquiao’s turn to religion has made him a nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt his opponents.
“Maybe his [Pacquiao] testosterone level now is lower and that’s taking away from his killer instinct,” Roach said via Fighthype. “Does he have the killer instinct that he once had? I’d have to say honestly that I don’t think so, but he feels that if it’s enough to beat a person, you don’t have to kill them. I was surprised in his last fight when he had his opponent [Chris Algieri] hurt, he jumped on him and tried to get him out of there, but then he went back to that nicer mode.”
If Pacquiao’s problem is a lack of testosterone then there’s nothing that can be done about that. It’s doubtful that the sanctioning bodies would allow Pacquiao to take testosterone supplements to increase the circulating testosterone in his body. Like all aging fighters that see a drop in their testosterone as they get older, Pacquiao will just have to live with it and adapt to what his body is capable of doing.
Unlike a lot of people, I never saw Pacquiao as being a knockout artist at welterweight. Yes, he was able to score knockouts over Cotto, Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya, but those knockouts were fueled by a combination of his opponents being weaker from having lost a lot of weight before their fights with him, and them simply not being at their best.
Cotto fought Pacquiao at a catch-weight in 2009 instead of the full weight for the welterweight class. Hatton and De La Hoya both reportedly had lost a lot of weight before they fought Pacquiao.
De La Hoya went on a diet of buffalo meat before the Pacquiao fight in 2008, and he looked painfully thin by the time he stepped into the ring for that fight. Hatton had reportedly lost a lot of weight in training camp before the fight, and that obviously didn’t help the British fighter.
Since Pacquiao’s fights against those guys, he’s fought fighters that didn’t have to take off lots of weight during their training camps. These guys all had no problems handling Pacquiao’s power, and I believe it was because they weren’t weight drained.
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