MANNY PACQUIAO’S TRAINER Freddie Roach believes Floyd Mayweather will fight the winner of Pac-Man’s encounter with Adrien Broner in two weeks’ time.
Roach believes Mayweather participated in his recent boxing exhibition versus Tenshin Nasukawa in Japan in order to remain in the news, and in fighting condition, ahead of a prospective ‘real’ boxing match later this year.
Mayweather, who turns 42 next month, has technically been retired since stopping Conor McGregor in the summer of 2017.
Pacquiao, 40, rolled back the years in his most recent bout, stopping hard-hitting Argentine Lucas Matthysse in Kuala Lumpur.
And Roach — who wasn’t in Pacquiao’s corner for the Matthysse bout due to a personal dispute between the pair, but is training the Filipino again for his upcoming scrap with Broner — believes victory over ‘The Problem’ will open the door to a hugely lucrative Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch.
“I feel 100% that’s why he did this,” the Hall-of-Fame trainer told BoxingScene of Mayweather’s facile TKO1 over kickboxer Nasukawa on New Year’s Eve, suggesting the 50-0 American has an eye on fighting the Pacquiao-Broner winner. “He wants to be on TV so badly. He misses it.
“I think both guys [Pacquiao and Broner] have that in their minds.
I’m sure Mayweather will wanna fight the winner of this fight. That’s why we definitely have to win this fight. We know that, and we’re ready to do that.
“The thing is, Manny needs to be impressive in this fight,” Roach added. “I feel he’s right there. I watched tapes of his last fight and I watched it live on TV. He fought a very, very good fight – one of the best fights he’s fought in a long time. He just has to duplicate that, and that’s definitely possible.”
Mayweather and Pacquiao squared off in 2015, their underwhelming bout generating over $600 million to become the most lucrative combat sports event in history. Pac-Man would later claim he had carried a right shoulder injury into the bout, and underwent surgery days later.
However, if the controversial Broner was to emerge victorious over Pacquiao at the MGM Grand on 19 January (live on ITV4 in these parts), he too would find himself in with a shout of squaring off with ‘Money’.
The pair have endured several ups and downs in their relationship ever since Mayweather took Broner under his wing at the start of the latter’s career, and a master-versus-apprentice type of fight would sell, particularly given Mayweather finally looked his age as he cruised to victory over McGregor in 2017.
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