Floyd Mayweather Sr. didn’t pull any punches Tuesday night when assessing Oscar De La Hoya’s choice to use Freddie Roach as his trainer for his May 5 mega fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Las Vegas. They will get it on at MGM Grand.
“I couldn’t care less about Freddie Roach,” Floyd Sr. said “Freddie Roach don’t know (expletive). I can tell you that. Tell me, who has he really trained? He didn’t train James Toney. James Toney trained himself. And who in the hell is Manny Pacquiao? He’s strong and he can punch hard, but that’s it; he doesn’t know how to box. So, who has he trained? Ain’t no question that Floyd Mayweather Sr. is the best trainer in the world. And De La Hoya knows it. You understand me? De La Hoya knows I’m the best.”
That may be true. But De La Hoya said Tuesday during a conference call that at the end of the day, he did not feel comfortable being trained by Floyd Sr. for this particular fight. He said he wasn’t sure that Floyd Sr. would be passionate about helping him try to knock out his son. De La Hoya said he needed a trainer who would unquestionably be on the same page with him. Moreover, De La Hoya said that his decision to go with Roach had nothing to do with Floyd Sr. asking for $2 million to train him for this fight.
Floyd Sr. believes that him being on the same page with De La Hoya had nothing to do with this scenario. In his mind, it was all about the greenbacks. He said De La Hoya didn’t want to give them up. He offered Floyd Sr. $500,000 and an additiona $500,000 if he won.
“It ain’t about knocking my son out. It ain’t about that,” Floyd Sr. said. “It’s about greed. Money.”
Whatever the case, the bottom line is Roach is now training De La Hoya to try and hand Floyd Jr. the first loss of his outstanding career. If you ask Floyd Sr., Roach is not the man for the job.
“He is about as good a trainer as he was a fighter,” Floyd Sr. said of Roach, who was 39-13 with 15 knockouts from 1978-86. “You can add that up right there. How good he was as a fighter is how good he is as a trainer. Calculate it and see what you come up with.
“He knows he can’t outtrain me. He knows it like all the rest of them. I can talk the way I talk about these trainers because I can back it up. I can take one hand and do more things than he can with two hands. … When you talk about Freddie the joke coach Roach, come on, man. That’s a joke. How could Oscar be so narrow minded to get up and say what this man can do. This man couldn’t teach a (expletive) cat to piss.”
Indeed, De La Hoya was singing the praises of Roach on Tuesday. Besides trusting that Roach “will be on the same page,” De La Hoya said he likes what Roach brings to the table.
“Obviously, he is a great trainer,” De La Hoya said of Floyd Sr. “He does have the tools necessary to show me how to beat his son. But, obviously, when you have a trainer like Freddie Roach, who is a master at dissecting the opponents and figuring out the styles, then I have no worries.”
Perhaps he should. A fighter can get real used to a trainer when he has been with him for six years. De La Hoya’s first fight with Floyd Sr. in his corner was March 24, 2001 against Arturo Gatti. De La Hoya stopped Gatti in the fifth round on his way to a 6-2 record under Floyd Sr. The losses came against “Sugar” Shane Mosley and Bernard Hopkins.
“As a professional in the ring and having gone through trainers in all these years, I’ve learned the various styles and I’ve grown as a fighter,” De La Hoya said. “I’ve always said that, when you stop learning in this game, that’s when you should quit. And, obviously, I haven’t stopped learning.
“Freddie Roach brings something new to the table, which I’m very anxious to learn. I have a great feeling that we’re going to adjust very quiclkly. We’re going to click with no problem. It’s not a concern whatsoever.”
Roach said he isn’t into changing much on a fighter with De La Hoya’s talent. He said any adjustments in style would be minor. He did say, however, that it will be important for De La Hoya to be able to adjust to what the incredibly crafty Floyd Jr. is doing in the ring.
“There are a lot of things we are going to do in training camp,” Roach said. “A lot of it depends on how Mayweather fights, also. We’re going to have a couple of game plans in there. And the thing is, making adjustments is the biggest part of the fight. If we don’t work on those adjustments during training camp, we’re never going to be able to make them during the fight.”
Roach has earned his stripes as a trainer. One of the good things about him is that he is the kind of trainer who wants his fighter to be electrifying in the ring. He wants to see his fighter win in spectacular fashion. Roach has a lot in common with Floyd Sr. in the regard. Emanuel Steward is another such trainer.
De La Hoya said that only one other trainer, Nacho Beristain, was even seriously considered to train him May 5.
“Nacho is a trainer who teaches you to box more than going in there and attacking,” De La Hoya said. “And I have a good feeling that when I sit down with Freddie and come up with a strategy, or with Freddie’s strategy, one of the main ones will probably be the attack. So I obviously felt that Freddie was the perfect trainer for this fight.”
Well, time will tell. But if De La Hoya wanted to knock out Floyd Mayweather Jr. on what could be a record-breaking night in boxing, he will have a much more difficult time doing it now that Floyd Sr. is not in his corner. So says Floyd Sr.
“The chance he had,” Floyd Sr. said, “is gone.”
