I do not like to sound as if I am still bitter behind the loss Manny Pacquiao suffered at the hands of Erik Morales, but even though that fight has been 4 weeks old now, I believe it is still a good exercise to determine what really were the factors that affected Pacquiao’s performance. In the Philippines, a majority of the fans believe it was all Murad Muhammad to blame on the mentally ill-prepared Manny Pacquiao last March 19th. However, nature has proved that there is always the other side of the story.
Freddie Roach, an acknowledged trainer par excellence, was also beamed going overboard by some camp. Some opinions said Roach became too good for comfort for Manny Pacquiao as he was perceived to have gone beyond his duty being just the chief trainer of the man heralded as “berdugo” by the Mexicans.
During the first quarter of 2004, Roach reportedly tried to convince Pacquiao to junk Murad and assign a new management team with the name of Keith Davidson surfacing. However, people who Manny trusted in his native Philippines prevailed over Roach for Pacquiao to remain with Murad.
Going into his preparation for Morales, everybody was surprised that Pacquiao suddenly signed with Shelly Finkel et al, without the knowledge of his business manager Rod Nazario, Murad Muhammad and other trusted advisers in his native land. It was no doubt that Freddie Roach was instrumental in making Pacquiao sign with Finkel and as mentioned in the first attempt in 2004, Keith Davidson is part of it and now officially with the Pacman Team.
With that decision of Pacquiao, there were suddenly two rival groups inside Pacman’s camp. Now the question is was it really Murad stance on the PPV issue or the sudden presence of the Finkel group brought by Roach that affected the mental preparation of Manny Pacquiao against Morales?
It was actually clear that Pacquiao wanted to get a protection for himself from Murad’s shrewd ways of handling his money fights. However, signing with Finkel could have worsened things for Pacquiao than for the better.
One of the major mistakes of Roach as aired by Murad Muhammad was his failure to bring Pacquiao to the required blood test ahead of time. Manny later revealed that there was a deliberate successful attempt by Murad that his initial certification of the blood test got lost. No matter if Murad has something to do with it, still Roach allowed Murad to prevail over him.
Next, it was revealed that there were hangers-on in Pacquiao’s new unit at the Sunset hotel. Justin Fortune, a Freddie Roach aid I believe was living with Pacquiao in that unit. However, what happened to his presence that he allowed hangers-on in that place that later Pacquiao admitted affected his mental preparation. Roach and Fortune are a team, and being on one team, Roach’s responsibility should extend to what is happening in Manny’s comfortable quarters.
During fight time, Manny weighed a questionable 141 pounds! What happened to the discipline and what happened to the planned target of just around 135 to 137 pounds. Roach’s game plan was to exploit Morales’ inferior speed on Pacquiao, but it turned out that Pacman was clearly gasping for air from round three onwards. Yes, Manny managed to finish the full fight and the cut affected him dearly, but his new found weight affected his mobility and his usual relentless attacks.
Lastly, Roach admitted they have underestimated Morales quite a bit. I believe more than the underestimation, it was more of failing to provide the mental preparation for Pacquiao.
This writer believes the moment Pacquiao signed with Finkel, Roach would know that Murad would be right there behind him in every way. Freddie Roach would know their signing with Finkel will create tension and thereafter would affect the people he met back in the Philippines that he made friends like Rudy Salud, Ronnie Nathanieslz and Rod Nazario. Roach is too good a person to enter into such a critical deal
In my opinion, it was not only Manny who got mentally ill-prepared, but also Freddie Roach during his training care for Manny, that is why simple things like the usual blood testing were overlooked.
In spite of all these mistakes, I still believe Freddie Roach is the right man for Manny Pacquiao. He is still the best man in the training business and I could see he is only after the best for his fighter, but I thought he could have done it with more caution. His animosity with Murad prevailed over him. The PPV issue is the key to why Roach recommended Finkel for Manny, but is Finkel the real key for Manny to salvage his PPV shares?
I just realized that instead of signing with Finkel and a pair of lawyers in the middle of the preparation, they could have spared the situation for a while, and then just signed a lawyer or even the Finkel group after the fight to sue Murad on the PPV shares. Like this, things would have been more peaceful for both Freddie and Manny and their preparation more focused and mentally done 100 per cent!
