Roach on What He Wants Next For Pacquiao and Cotto

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This is part two of the article with Freddie Roach after his controversial loss while training Ruslan Provodnikov vs, Chris Algieri last Saturday night in Brooklyn. Part one can be seen here:

Roach Says Power Punching Should Have Been The Difference

Some of the topics he went over for this article include Miguel Cotto’s reasoning for Sergio Martinez and what’s next for him, what is next for Manny Pacquiao, and last but of course not least, more talk of a Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight.

When asked for top opponents for Cotto, Roach replied, “Canelo Alvarez, if he wins. It’s the biggest fight. If Lara wins, he’s not that appealing.” When the name Golovkin was mentioned, Freddie joked a bit and said, “Yeah, you know I’ve thought about that. I’ve been told how great this guy is. He came to my gym. He’s a real nice guy. He’s a little skinny, but punches like a (expletive) mule. This guy can really punch. But honestly, he’s one of the best fighters in the world and I’ve heard all of this, but I’ve never seen him fight and I’m a fight fan and I watch fights. He fights on UHF stations. The thing is, 160, it’s something we have to think about of course. I shouldn’t really talk cause I don’t make his fights, Gaby (Penagaricano) and him (Cotto) make his fights, all I do is get him ready for them.”

It has been said that Miguel Cotto has a date reserved at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, in December. So I asked him about both the possibilities of Cotto going out to the West coast in Las Vegas as well as Canelo Alvarez possibly coming out to the East Coast to New York in December. Roach once against restated that he doesn’t make the fights for Cotto or determine the sites and venues for his fights, but he did say, “Canelo probably wouldn’t come to the East Coast.”

Roach said he mentioned Canelo because for Cotto’s last fight, they approached him with 2 names. Sergio and Canelo, and even though Cotto could have gotten a better deal fighting Canelo, Roached advised them (Penagaricano and Cotto) to fight Sergio, saying, “This guy you want to get right now, it could be it for him. The other guy is young. He’ll be around for a long time. They liked my thought pattern and it worked well.” When speaking of that magical moment at MSG last week, Roach said, “Everything worked. Sometimes you have a good night in boxing where everything you do and everything you try works and those nights are so good to have. I’ve had that maybe once or twice in my life. It’s just a great performance.”

Manny Pacquiao recently signed an extension to stay with both Top Rank and with HBO. Roach was asked if he was surprised or even happy that Pacquiao re-signed. “I like Bob (Arum), but I kinda was thinking he might (be a free agent). I thought he would go into promotions and maybe promote himself, but he doesn’t really have that team to pull that off and without Bob, he may not have anyone to protect him. There are a lot of sharp guys out there. (Al) Haymon is a very sharp guy, (Richard) Schaefer is a sharp guy, Oscar (De La Hoya), when is clean and sober, which I think he is, and I’m happy for that, I like Oscar, but that’s why I stay independent, I can fight for anyone, I don’t have an exclusive deal with anyone, but the fighters end up having that and that’s when you start having problems.”

When Roach was asked who’s next for Pacquiao, Roach said, “Bob asked me, he says what about Amir Khan? And I said, well, if you can get Amir Khan, what why don’t we fight Danny Garcia? Cause I like that fight. I think it’s a high profile fight. Amir in his last fight, he held a lot. He made it boring. I don’t want Manny in a boring fight. To keep the PPV audience we want, we gotta fight better guys than that. I said if you can get Khan, you can get Danny Garcia, but is that crossover possible? I’m not sure.” When asked about another Marquez match, Roach joked and said, “I wonder sometimes when a guy gets 40 yrs old and gets pimples on his back and has a guy named Heredia in his corner, friend of mine (laughing). Some things just don’t add up but I don’t want to get sued too badly. I think he’ll come to the table sooner or later.”

Of course no conversation that involves Manny Pacquiao can be complete without mentioning Floyd “Money” Mayweather. Roach said, “It’s still the biggest fight out there and neither really has any opponents to fight that people REALLY want to see. Bob and Haymon like hate each other for some reason. I don’t know why people can’t really let things go and just negotiate.” Regarding negotiations on the fight, Roach stated, “Pacquiao has lost, and that makes Floyd the A side of the picture and we understand that, when he asked for 60-40, we said fine, we accepted that, and the blood test, we agreed on the blood test. I thought everything was going the right way. Then all of a sudden his phone number changed.”

Roach did dispel the rumor and said that Manny told him that he had no knowledge of the alleged story of Floyd offering Manny $40 mil and Floyd taking the rest. “I heard that but I don’t know if that was a true offer cause I asked many about that and Manny said he knew nothing about it”, said Roach. He also did acknowledge that it wasn’t just talk for the media that they actually did speak with each other during that negotiation.
Roach was nice enough to stay until after 2 am still answering questions for reporters, he showed his class and realness in his answers and boxing fans should appreciate it because with the politics in boxing nowadays, realness, especially with big figures in the sport, can be very rare.