By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is curious to know how Floyd Mayweather Jr. will elect to fight Manny Pacquiao this Saturday night. Roach thinks that Mayweather will likely choose to run from Pacquiao for most of the fight, and he says he has Pacquiao ready to cut off the ring on him to force him into a toe-to-toe battle. But if Mayweather does opt to go after Pacquiao, Roach says they’ll be ready for that kind of game plan. Roach feels that is a situation that will go Pacquiao’s way because he sees him as the stronger guy.
“I feel like my guy is the better guy in this fight,” Roach said to the Boxing Channel. “I’m confident and I feel really good about it. I do expect him to come out a little more aggressive because he’s going to be the bigger guy and the stronger guy in the fight. Well, not the stronger guy, but he’ll have bigger muscles, but I’m not sure why. A fact is a fact. Look at his training camp. There are a lot of bad guys there.”
Roach seems to be dropping kind of hint when he talks about Mayweather’s muscles and his camp having some “bad guys.” I don’t know why Roach would even want to go there and tarnish the fight. If he wants to build the fight up, he should be taking the high road rather than dealing from the bottom of the deck in dropping huge hints about Mayweather’s muscles.
The reality is Mayweather is working on his strength in this camp so that he can punch harder for the fight. He’s got one of the best in the business working with him in him hiring strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza. He’s the guy that helped Pacquiao develop into a huge puncher in assisting him to bulk up to welterweight in 2008. But instead of keeping Ariza and staying loyal to him, Pacquiao failed to keep Roach from letting Ariza go. As such, Pacquiao hasn’t had a knockout since Ariza left and he’s not looked like the same knockout threat that he once was. Roach keeps predicting knockouts with each and every fight for Pacquiao, but he’s failed to even come close to scoring knockouts since 2009.
“I think change is sometimes bad. He’s been consistently a winner for a long time he’s going to be going into a swimming pool,” Roach said. “I think it’s foolish to do those things this close to a fight.”
Roach doesn’t think it’s a great idea for Mayweather to try new things out with his training. That tells you a little about Roach as a trainer. That’s one of the criticisms that people have about Roach and Pacquiao. He’s made no changes to Pacquiao’s fighting style since he started training him many years ago, and he’s still making the same mistakes that he was when he first turned pro. Rather than fix the mistakes that Pacquiao has been making, Roach has kept him with the same style, which Mayweather calls “reckless.”
“If he [Mayweather] doesn’t run, I’ll be really surprised,” Roach said. “The thing is he can only run so far because we will cut the ring off and we will set traps for him. We know he likes to move and run. Somewhere along the lines he will attack us. If he attacks us, we’re ready for him, but I really suspect he’ll do what he does best and that’s to run,” Roach said.
Mayweather will definitely be using some movement on Saturday night. He’s not just going to stand there like some of Pacquiao’s opponents that his promoter Bob Arum has put in there with him. Mayweather is an A-level fighter, not a B-level or C-level guy like the ones Arum has been feeding the Filipino star. If that upsets Roach then it’s on him. He has to realize that the high caliber fighters don’t fight stupid, and if Roach and Pacquiao can’t adapt then they deserve to lose. You have to be smart to beat the smarter fighters in the sport, and you have to be able to keep learning new things. Unfortunately, Pacquiao and Roach seem to be resistant to change. For that reason I think things are going to go bad for them on Saturday.
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