Roach: Mayweather is in love with the zero on his record

By Jeff Sorby - 12/26/2014 - Comments

With a fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao a possibility in early 2015, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is starting to show how badly he wants that fight. Roach is talking about how Mayweather’s legacy will be marred if he chooses to retire without fighting Pacquiao at least once. Roach thinks Mayweather doesn’t want to fight Pacquiao because he’s afraid of suffering the first loss of his career.

The interesting thing about this is Roach admits that it was probably Pacquiao’s side that was at fault for a fight between him and Mayweather not taking place in 2010 due to the blood testing that Mayweather wanted.

Since that was really the only time that there was any serious discussion that took place for a fight between them, it doesn’t make Pacquiao look good that the fight wasn’t made then. Mayweather gave him a chance and he failed to take him up on what he was asking for in terms of the negotiations.

“He’s so in love with that zero on that record,” Roach said to Jim Lampley on his program Fight Game. “If he retires not fighting Manny, that will be a big question when he’s asked for things. I think that will ruin his legacy,” Roach said.

Whether it ruins Mayweather’s boxing legacy or not is not something that Roach needs to worry about. He can speculate that Mayweather’s legacy will be ruined because he failed to fight Pacquiao, but there’s no way of knowing whether it will or not. It doesn’t help Pacquiao that his promoter Bob Arum is talking about May 2nd being a date that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez should be fighting on rather than Mayweather and Pacquiao.

Why is Arum not showing huge interest in letting Pacquiao fight Mayweather on May 2nd when that’s the date that Mayweather wants the fight to take place. It would seem like Arum would want the fight to take place instead of coming up with excuses for why the fight can’t take place.

“Possibly we’ll do a multi fight contract. I thought that was the best idea in the world,” Roach said. “I’d love to see these guys fight more than once, if they split the first two, then the third could be a rubber match, and we’d have three big fights.”

Instead of Roach getting ahead of himself and talking about three fights taking place between Pacquiao and Mayweather, Roach should be talking about them facing each other once for starters. You’ve got to walk before you can run. If they can at least fight once, then there’s always a possibility of them facing each other again if the fight is controversial or close. But for Roach to be talking about wanting a three-fight contract, it makes zero sense at this point.