Manny Pacquiao hasn’t spoken to his trainer Freddie Roach since his defeat to Jeff Horn over a week ago. Roach doesn’t know what’s going on with the former 8 division world champion Pacquiao. He’s not sure of the 38-year-old Pacquiao is angry at him for some reason or what.
Roach says he still hasn’t been paid yet for the fight. Pacquiao lost a 12 round unanimous decision to the unbeaten and much bigger 29-year-old Horn (17-0-1, 11 KOs). On Monday, the World Boxing Organization rescored the Pacquiao-Horn fight with 5 independent judges scoring it, and they had Horn winning it by the scores 115-113, 114-113, and 114-113 for Horn. One judge scored it for Pacquiao, 114-113, and the final judge had it scored even at 114-114. That review by the WBO has closed the chapter on Pacquiao’s request to have the fight reviewed. The next move is Pacquiao’s. He needs to let his promoter Bob Arum know whether he wants to fight Horn again or not. If Pacquiao rejects a second fight with Horn, his options for a fight against someone else appear to be very, very limited.
As for why Pacquiao hasn’t spoken to Roach, it could be a number of reasons. Pacquiao might be busy with job as a senator in the Philippines. It’s also possible that he’s not happy with the outcome of the fight. Does Pacquiao feel like he let Roach down by not beating the inexperienced Horn? Is Pacquiao avoiding Roach because he feels ashamed about losing? Who knows? The fight was there to be won by Pacquiao if he’s turned up the gas after hurting Horn in the 9th. Horn was bloody and battered at the end of the 9th. All Pacquiao had to do is produce one more round just like the 9th, and he would have had a knockout win. Pacquiao did the opposite. He backed off in the 10th, and only fought with sporadic bursts of energy. Boxing News 24 had Horn taking over the fight and finishing strong in the last 3 rounds. Roach chew Pacquiao out in between rounds after the 10th and 11th rounds the ay that some trainers would. A good trainer would have gotten more out of Pacquiao in those last 3 rounds than Roach in my view.
”I was trying to see where his head was at and I could not even get him to say ‘hi’ to me,” said Roach to Sports Illustrated. ”I don’t know if he was upset with me or what. I really don’t know if he’s mad at me. But I can tell you this: I haven’t been paid yet. So who knows?”
There are some boxing fans who believe that Roach lost track of how close the fight was, and he failed to push Pacquiao in the crucial last part of the fight when he was trailing Horn. Roach needed to tell Pacquiao how important the last 3 rounds were, and it doesn’t look like he did that. Is this the reason why Pacquiao isn’t speaking with Roach? I’m not sure. If Roach was my trainer, I wouldn’t be happy with the job he did in the corner.
“Manny wasn’t himself. He didn’t look like the Manny Pacquiao I’ve known for a long time,” said Roach. ”It was almost over in the ninth. One more round like that and, man … he just couldn’t do it.”
To be honest, Pacquiao looked tired after the 9th round. You have to realize how much energy Pacquiao expended in the 9th in throwing a lot of left hands. Pacquiao looked exhausted during the 9th. It’s not all that usual that Pacquiao didn’t go on the attack to try and reproduce the results of the 9th in the subsequent rounds. Pacquiao had the look of a 40-year-old man, who had nothing left in the tank. Could Pacquiao have done more under the right circumstances? Yes, I think Pacquiao could have with the right motivation, but he wasn’t getting that from Roach. The aging trainer wasn’t lighting a fire under Pacquiao by losing his temper and tearing into his fighter. If I was the one in Pacquiao’s corner, I’d be ripping him apart. I wouldn’t have let Pacquiao sit down in between rounds. I’d have taken his stool and lit him up with criticism in how he was fighting. Believe me; Pacquiao would have fought a lot harder in the last 3 rounds under those circumstances.
“Let the people judge for themselves,” said Pacquiao to spin.ph about his fight with Horn. “People saw what happened. We have seen worse judgments in the past where judges manipulated results.”
The boxing fans did see the Pacquiao-Horn fight, and many of them though Horn won. I personally had Horn winning the fight 117-111. The fans are saying that Pacquiao didn’t look good, and he wasn’t the same fighter that he once was. A lot of fans are saying Pacquiao looked like an old man in the ring against Horn.
The rematch between Pacquiao and Horn is very much up in the air right now, as Pacquiao hasn’t yet confirmed whether he’ll fight on after the defeat. Putting the fight together is going to be difficult, as Horn reportedly has a guaranteed purse of $3 million for the fight. Horn’s purse for the Pacquiao fight last week was $500,000 compared to Pacquiao’s $10 million. If Pacquiao insists on getting another $10 million, it might be difficult to make the fight happen, given Horn’s much bigger purse than in the previous fight. Will Pacquiao agree to a smaller purse as the loser from the first fight, or will he dig his heels into the sand and insist on the same $10 million purse as the first fight. It’s unclear whether the money will be there if Pacquiao wants the same purse and Horn gets a bigger purse of $3 million. Pacquiao could wind up pricing himself out for the fight and ending up with nothing.
If the Pacquiao-Horn 2 fight doesn’t happen, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will likely keep him fighting his Top Rank stable fighters instead of putting him in with the popular fighters in the welterweight division. Arum could wind up sticking Pacquiao in with little known Russian contender Konstantin Ponomarev. I doubt that Pacquiao would make more than $5 million fighting Ponomarev. To be sure, it would be a much more winnable fight for Pacquiao, considering that Ponomarev isn’t a big puncher and he’s not someone that is going to come into the ring looking like a middleweight the way that Horn did. Arum would likely make it worthwhile for Pacquiao to fight Ponomarev by giving the Filipino star a nice payday, but it’s doubtful that the money would be anywhere close to what he could get in a rematch with Horn.
The big question is will Pacquiao give in and take less money for the Horn rematch than in the first fight? Will $7 million be enough for Pacquiao in a second fight with the Australian? If Horn is going to be getting a minimum purse of $3 million, the money has to come from some place. Pacquiao is no longer the WBO welterweight champion. It would be disappointing if Pacquiao prices himself out for the Horn fight, because his options appear to be terrible. If the 86-year-old Arum were open to matching Pacquiao against non-Top Rank fighters, he would have great options.
There are tons of popular and highly talented fighters in boxing for Pacquiao to fight. I just don’t know that Arum will do that. I think Arum will offer Pacquiao 2 choices in giving him the option of fighting Ponomarev or Terence Crawford. Those choices pale in comparison to some of the fights that Pacquiao should be offered against Amir Khan, Adrien Broner, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Miguel Cotto, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, Lucas Matthysse and Errol Spence Jr. Pacquiao should be offered one of those guys by Arum instead of Ponomarev or Crawford. Those guys aren’t with Arum’s Top Rank stable though.
