By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach is hoping Manny Pacquiao can end his seven-year dry spell of knockouts by stopping Tim Bradley in their fight next month on April 9. Roach, 56, is trying to entice Pacquiao to get a knockout in this fight by telling him how it’ll help his political career in the Philippines.
Pacquiao is trying to win a senate seat in the May elections, and Roach thinks that if he knocks Bradley out, it’ll help get Pacquiao elected somehow. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case. It’s likely the voters will be focusing on selecting someone they feel will do a good job for them in office rather than someone that scores a knockout against Bradley.
Pacquiao’s last KO came against Miguel Cotto in 2009. Even that knockout was a controversial one, because Cotto was still on his feet and fighting back at the time the referee halted the fight. Even if you want to consider that a legitimate knockout, it came 1,948 yesterdays’ ago, and that’s a long time.
I don’t think Pacquiao is going to all of a sudden end his dry spell of knockouts for this fight no matter how hard he tries. What Pacquiao has going against him in trying to get a KO, besides his advanced age, is the fact that Bradley isn’t lilkely going to stand in the pocket to make it easy for him on April 9. Bradley is more mobile now, and he’s not going to stand in place like Ricky Hatton did or how Cotto did so that Pacquiao can get a knockout.
“He knocks out all sorts of guys at 140,” said Roach to RingTV.com. “I don’t think he’s had one at 147. But, for this, he’s highly motivated. He wants to go out a shining star. I told him a KO means he’ll do better in the Senate race. With a KO, the country will go crazy.”
I think Bradley has a better chance of getting a knockout in this fight than the 37-year-old Pacquiao. Bradley seems to be hitting harder now, and he says he’s eating meat now. Previously, Bradley was a vegetarian and that might have robbed him of the punching power that he needed to get the knockout against guys like Pacquiao.
Bradley is going to be looking to time Pacquiao in this fight, and nailing him with shots when he comes in looking to score a knockout. Whether Pacquiao can take Bradley’s punching power or not remains to be seen. We saw Juan Manuel Marquez knockout Pacquiao in 2012 with a simple right hand. Bradley can probably do the same thing if he times him good with one of his punches that he puts everything he has into it.
Roach will make it easy for Bradley by him encouraging Pacquiao in between rounds, and whipping him into a frenzy. Instead of Pacquiao using his boxing brain to beat Bradley, he’ll likely look to go out there and punch with him and this will lead to him getting stopped.
The question is will Pacquiao’s constituents still vote for him if he gets knocked out by Bradley on 4/9 in their fight on HBO PPV from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada? My guess is the voters won’t want to elect a guy that was knocked out.
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