By Chris Williams: If Manny Pacquiao loses to Jessie Vargas on Saturday night, it won’t be due to a lack of preparation on his part. Pacquiao has been though a full training camp with his head trainer Freddie Roach, who feels that he’s 100 percent ready to challenger the 27-year-old Vargas for his WBO welterweight title on November 5 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Top Rank is televising the Pacquiao-Vargas fight on pay-per-view without HBO, and promoter Bob Arum believes it’s going to bring in a lot of pay-per-view buys. That would be a surprise if it does, because judging by the lack of buzz on the fight from the boxing fans, my guess is the fight does fewer buys than Pacquiao’s recent third fight against Tim Bradley, which drew only 400,000 buys.
By Dan Ambrose: It’s widely known that middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin is having problems getting the top middleweights to fight him right now. There are only three fighters – Saul Canelo Alvarez, Daniel Jacobs and Billy Joe Saunders that are worth fighting right now at 160 for Triple G.
It might take Golovkin years to get all or some of them to fight him. Trainer Freddie Roach feels that Golovkin should move up to the light heavyweight division (175) in order for him to get better fights and more recognition in the boxing world.
By Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum recently joked of wanting to put him in with KO artist Gennady Golovkin, but now it appears that Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is interested in matching him against WBO junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Roach says he’s not concerned with the size of the 26-year-old Canelo, who some boxing fans believe he rehydrates into the 180s for his fights, as long as he can get him to agree to a rehydration limit.
Roach feels that Pacquiao will whip Canelo’s backside if he can get him to agree to a fight with a set rehydration limit. Roach wants to keep Canelo from rehydrating 30 pounds after he weighs in. Roach feels that Pacquiao can beat Canelo, but not if the Mexican star is 30 pounds heavier than him on fight night.
FREDDIE ROACH: It was a pretty tough schedule in this camp but he held up really well. The sparring days were really good and it’s the best I’ve seen Manny in a long time – he is a lot more aggressive than I have seen him in the past and there was a lot of the old Manny Pacquiao coming out and he really, really looked good. We trained right up until Saturday morning before our flight out to Los Angeles and he boxed 10 rounds and he looked great and he’s in great shape, I know it’s been a very difficult camp with the Senate and so forth. Manny has always been a busy person but because of the Senate he seems to be a lot more serious than anything else he has done. He is in Senate sessions on some nights until 7:30 or 8:00 at night and when he is done we go right to the gym.
By Allan Fox: Trainer Freddie Roach says the winner of the Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward fight next month won’t decide who the best pound-for-pound fighter is in his view, because he still believes that middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin is the best fighter in the sport of boxing pound-for-pound.
If anything, Roach says the winner of the November 5th fight between Kovalev and Ward will bring the winner closer to where Golovkin is, but it WON’T make them better than him.
What Kovalev and Ward have going against them is that neither of them has looked good in their recent tune-up fights. Kovalev, 33, struggled to beat Isaac Chilemba last July in Russia, and Ward has looked poor in three straight fights since making his comeback. Neither fighter looks like a No.1 pound-for-pound fighter, because they’re not dominating the 175lbd vision in an effortless manner the way that Golovkin is at 160.
By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao, still is very interested in having him fight Mexican middleweight Saul Canelo Alvarez in a mega-fight despite Pacquiao having recently said that he’s too big for him. Pacquiao didn’t want to keep fighting junior middleweights after his win over Antonio Margarito six years ago. That fight turned out to be a grueling one in some ways for Pacquiao. Roach seems to want the Canelo fight for Pacquiao. He wants it before Pacquiao fights other guys like Terence Crawford.
Roach says there would need to be a rehydration clause in the contract to keep Canelo from rehydrating up to 200 pounds. Roach is joking about Canelo rehydrating that heavy, but he likely doesn’t want Canelo rehydrating into the 170s or 180s for the fight because that would put Pacquiao at a huge weight disadvantage. Pacquiao rehydrates to around 150. If he has to fight a 180lb Canelo, he’d be giving away 30 pounds and it would be nearly impossible for him to beat him. It would be like Jack Dempsey vs. Jess Willard all over again.
By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions’ flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) could taste defeat at the hands of unbeaten WBO junior middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) on September 17, according to trainer Freddie Roach. He’s had the 27-year-old Smith over to his Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, California, and he was very impressed with what he saw of the British fighter.
Roach is now a fan of Smith, and he believes he could beat the 26-year-old Canelo, and he wouldn’t call it an upset if that happens. Roach sees the fight as a very even one in his opinion. That shows you how highly Roach values Smith’s skills, power and toughness. He thinks he’s got the goods to potentially give Canelo his second loss of his pro career.
“Liam Smith is a solid guy,” said Roach to Fighthub.com. “He can win that fight [against Canelo]. Liam Smith is a tough, tough guy. Don’t underestimate him. He’s solid. He’s a tough guy.”
What Roach didn’t touch on was the crowd being fully behind Canelo at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The boxing fans are going to be cheering everything that Canelo does, and this ould very well influence the judges’ scores for the fight.
We’ve seen how the judges have come up with odd scores in favor of Canelo in his past fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. One judge had the Mayweather-Canelo fight a draw. The judges that gave Canelo a win over Lara appeared to be seeing a different fight than the one that many boxing fans saw on the night, beause they had Lara winning the contest.
By Eric Baldwin: Saul Canelo Alvarez and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions aren’t taking the fight with Gennady Golovkin right now because there’s not enough money in that fight, according to trainer Freddie Roach. While Roach isn’t connected to Canelo or Golden Boy in looking out for the Mexican fighter’s welfare, he says he undercards why Golden Boy isn’t making the fight against Golovkin.
Roach doesn’t see Golovkin as a pay-per-view fighter right now, and a fight between him and Canelo just doesn’t make enough money to justify putting the fight together. Roach points out that boxing has a business aspect to it with fighters needing to make as much money as they can to set themselves up for later life when they’re no longer competing. Roach thinks there just isn’t enough of a demand for a fight between Golovkin and Canelo to make it a big enough fight for the risk involved from Canelo’s side.
By Dan Ambrose: Liam Smith could prove to be a more difficult obstacle than many boxing fans expect him to be when he defends his WBO junior middleweight title next month against Golden Boy Promotion’s flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) on September 17 on HBO pay-per-view from AT&T Arena in Arlington, Texas.
The unbeaten Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) is seen as an easy mark for the 26-year-old Canelo in the eyes of a lot of fans, many of which who have already written him off without having even seen him fight before. One person who has seen the 27-year-old Smith fight in the past is trainer Freddie Roach, who sees him as a very tough fight for Canelo.
By Scott Gilfoid: Kell Brook isn’t getting a lot of boxers, trainers or boxing fans giving him much chance to beat Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their fight next month. Trainer Freddie Roach and former IBF/WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto are the latest people that have come out and chimed in with their opinions about Brook being up against it in this fight. Berto at least thinks Brook has a chance of maybe doing something against GGG.
Berto isn’t quite sure. He seems Brook as being ultra-confident about being able to beat the hard hitting Triple G, but he’s not sure if that’s fake confidence or not. For his part, Roach just thinks that Golovkin is going to blow through Brook like he’s not even there.
Golovkin and Brook will be fighting on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
