In what has to be seen as an area if huge concern for Manny Pacquiao for his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Saturday night, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is saying that Pacquiao’s weight dropped to just 143 pounds on Thursday.
This is down seven pounds from the 150 pounds that Roach had been proudly been talking about in the past couple of weeks. Upon discovering that Pacquiao’s weight had dropped to 143, Roach told him to have a nice meal. However, at this point it’s not realistic to assume that there will any movement in Pacquiao’s weight by the time the fight takes place on Saturday.
Roach can stuff Pacquiao with food all he wants before the Mayweather fight, but there’s no way that Pacquiao is going to put on seven pounds of natural muscle by fight time.
“Manny was down to 143 pounds yesterday, so I told him to eat a good meal and then we will do a light workout later today,” Roach said via Fightnews.com. “Tomorrow he will have breakfast in the morning and then get on the scale.”
I think it’s a losing effort on Roach’s part in trying to get Pacquiao’s weight back up. If Pacquiao dropped seven pounds in just a two to three weeks, it suggests that he’s been working out too hard and not putting in enough calories to keep his weight up. That’s on Roach and the guy that monitors Pacquiao’s food intake. They should have been putting him on a scale daily so that they could notice the weight drop and arrest it before it got to this point.
Mayweather will definitely be coming into Saturday’s fight at around 150 pounds, possibly a little higher. If Pacquiao only weighs 143 for the fight, then it’s going to give Mayweather close to a 10 pound weight advantage. If you Mayweather that kind of a weight advantage, along with his six inch reach advantage, he’s going to beat you on size alone.
Pacquiao is looking like someone who is clearly a weight division below Mayweather at this point, and not a true welterweight. This suggests that Pacquiao is going to have a really tough time on Saturday night with Mayweather’s size, and it could be a huge problem if Mayweather starts walking him down looking to punch his lights out.
“If we were to lose to an undefeated fighter like this, there’s no shame in that,” Roach said. “Floyd’s a good fighter, but he has picked his opponents. I don’t think he picked Manny. I think he was forced to take this fight.”
I don’t know about you but I’m starting to smell fear coming from Roach. This isn’t the same cocky guy that has been bragging for weeks how Pacquiao is going to go out and beat Mayweather by either a knockout or a lopsided decision. Roach is now sounding like someone who realizes that his fighter Pacquiao doesn’t have a chance of winning the fight. It’s a pity because I was hoping that it would be a spirited fight, but it now seems like Roach is already accepting defeat ahead of time.
