Roach: Mayweather doesn’t stand a chance!

By Boxing News - 04/04/2015 - Comments

roachBy Chris Williams: To listen to Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, Floyd Mayweather Jr. doesn’t have any chance of beating the 36-year-old Pacquiao in their mega-fight on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach sees this fight as being in the bag for Pacquiao, and he’s not worried about it all despite the fact that Pacquiao is a 2-1 underdog with the odds-makers.

Roach obviously sees some perceived weakness in Mayweather that he feels that Pacquiao will be able to exploit, because he wouldn’t be so confident now if he didn’t see some flaw in Mayweather’s game that he thought that Pacquiao could take advantage of.

It would be news to everyone in the boxing world if Roach would reveal the flaw that he sees in Mayweather’s game that makes this such an easy fight for Pacquiao. I remember Roach being supremely confident of Pacquiao’s chances the last time he fought Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012, and we saw how that fight didn’t turn out well at all for Pacquiao with him getting knocked unconscious by a right hand from Marquez.

In speaking with Sports.tempo.com.ph, Roach said that Mayweather “doesn’t stand a chance [against Pacquiao].”

I don’t think Roach is seeing things clearly for this fight. This isn’t Sergio Martinez that Pacquiao will be fighting on May 2nd. Roach hand-picked Martinez for his fighter Miguel Cotto to fight last June after Roach spotted weakness in Martinez’s game.

Martinez hadn’t fought in 14 months, and was coming off of a poor performance against Martin Murray. Further, the 39-year-old Martinez had gone through two back to back surgeries on his right knee.

All of that left him an easy mark for Cotto to defeat. Now it looks like Roach has spotted some weakness in Mayweather’s game. I can’t think of what Roach is seeing, because Mayweather looked superb in his last two fights against Marcos Maidana.

Roach said “we’re [Pacquiao] ahead of schedule.”

If Pacquiao is ahead of schedule then that could be a sign that he might wind up over-training for this fight unless he backs off and takes it easy.

If Mayweather doesn’t stand a chance for this fight then you have to wonder why Roach is even bothering to train Pacquiao. If he’s that much better than Mayweather then it would seem like training isn’t even necessary for Pacquiao to win the fight.

There’s a little less than one month to go before the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight. If Pacquiao is already ahead of schedule for the fight, as Roach says, then there’ a chance that he could wind up over-training. What we don’t want is Roach to have an excuse for Pacquiao’s performance if things go badly for him.

Roach being overconfident could be Pacquiao’s undoing in this fight. The last thing you want is to have Roach assuming that Mayweather is going to be another easy mark like the guys that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has largely been feeding him since 2010. The only tough opponent that Pacquiao has faced during the last five years is Juan Manuel Marquez, who arguably has beaten him all four times that they’ve faced each other.



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