In the second part of a recent interview with Freddie Roach, he told me that he is still being asked, wherever he goes, to ‘Get the fight on’ between his charge Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.
“Everywhere I go, people say ‘Get the fight on…we want to see Mayweather knocked out…’. I’m convinced the more I look at this that they are scared to fight us,” explained Roach, who has begun training with Pacquiao in Los Angeles for the WBO welterweight defence against Joshua Clottey in Arlington, Texas, on March 13.
“What I don’t like in this fight not happening is that both parties will lose a lot of fans. People are fickle. I want this fight to happen. I want to be the first one to beat Mayweather. If they don’t fight each other, there is a hole missing in the big picture.”
“It’s a science building a fighter, and we’ve done that with Manny. This was the perfect time for him to fight Mayweather. When, and if, it happens…it will be the biggest event of all time…” The fight was expected to generate in the region of 200 million US dollars, with television executives believing the highest pay per view figure of 2.44 million buys – for Mayweather v De La Hoya in June 2007 – would be broken in the match-up of the two master boxers from this generation.
The master trainer also revealed that Pacquiao has a growing respect for up-and-coming British fighter Amir Khan. “Manny has a lot of time for Amir. He even asked me for Amir’s address, because he wanted to invite him to his birthday party [in The Philippines]. Manny and Amir are good friends. They run together, Amir is the only one who can compete with him, Pacquiao’s hard to keep up with, and they go back and forth in their runs, and Manny likes Amir’s work ethic.”
Meanwhile, in the UK yesterday, Khan was on daytime national television…insisting that Ricky Hatton should “Chill out and retire…”
