Boxing Updates: Latest Boxing Event

The pair face of each other in Las Vegas on May 2nd with the winner of their battle crowned boxing’s pound-for-pound king.

Pacquiao’s mouthy coach Freddie Rouch warned ‘The Hitman’;”If you try to box Manny,you’ll get killeed.
mouthy told manny that if it goes past three rounds, I’d be mad at him.

Roach is a sworm enemy of Hatton’s trainer Floyd Mayweather Snr and claims his fellow American is too late to save the Manchester idol from defeat.

Last year Billy Graham has been replaced by Mayweather Snr,but Roach said:”He’s going to try and make him a better boxer, but obviously it is too late to change him at this stage of his career.

Roach said that I’ve been with Manny eaight years and I have never tried to change him, just improve on what we do.

“Ricky and Floyd have totally different styles. The best way for Ricky to fight is like he does.”

The duo have been fierce rivals ever since Mayweather Snr replaced Roach as the trainer of Oscar de la Hoya.

Mayweather Snr dubbed his enemy ‘Joke Coach’ Roach, who even boasts that Pacquiao’s chief sparring partner, Jorge Linares, is better than Hatton.

“We figure that if Manny can look sharp against a fighter like Linares, he can look sharp against anyone.

“Good work is good work. I don’t care what style it is. Linares makes Manny think and not many fighters can do that.

“Ricky’s very basic. Linares is a thinker and it raises Pacquiao’s game.”

Roach clearly hopes to unhinge Hatton, who jetted off to Las Vegas yesterday to prepare for his IBO and Ring Magazine light-welterweight title defence.

He has also demanded that Joe Cortez, the referee Hatton was critical of when he suffered his only loss in 46 fights to Floyd Mayweather Jnr in December 2007, is in charge of the Pacquiao fight.

Hatton has ignored gobby Roach and flew off to the Nevada desert after promoting his welterweight brother Matthew’s sixth-round stoppage of Ted Bami in Altrincham on Saturday night.

Matthew will box on his brother’s undercard alongside British Olympian Joe Murray, who won his professional debut on the same bill, outpointing Sid Razak in a six-round featherweight bout.

Hatton said: “It was an exceptional performance from Joe. He won every round and nearly got him in the end.”

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Barring the unlikely unretirement of Lennox Lewis to face one of the Klitschko brothers, or the even more unlikely unretirement of Mike Tyson to face Evander Holyfield for a third time, boxing has only one potential superfight to offer the world right now — the pound-for-pound king of the sport, Manny Pacquiao, vs. the undefeated former pound-for-pound king, Floyd “Money” Mayweather.

It says that In a sports that desperately needs a high-profile events to pull in the casual audience, this is a fight that seems like it simply has to happen. and now with some rumors circulating that Mayweather is already making his move to  end his sham of a retirement and fight a tune-up bout on HBO in july, Money vs Manny looks like it is moving closer and closer to reality.

Further evidence of that came this week from Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, whose comments about a possible Pacquiao/Mayweather fight can only be taken as the first salvos of what promises to be a tortured negotiation over money with Floyd’s people. Yesterday, Arum told Luis Sandoval of Boxing Scene that he has no interest in Mayweather because he wants bigger fights for Manny.

Arum told Sandoval that “I’m not thrilled about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather because there are other fighters who draw a lot better than Mayweather,”

I’m betting Pac/Hatton struggles to do half a mill in PPV numbers, which isn’t chump change by any means. But it will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Pacquiao is not in Floyd’s league as an A-side draw. Pacquiao also brings the Filipino television market, of course, but there’s a reason that he fights right here in the U.S. and not the Philippines. Because this is where the serious money’s at.

Bob Arum knows all of this, of course. He knows that Floyd/Pacquiao is far and away the most lucrative fight that he could make for his fighter right now, and that the other options he’s putting out there — Pacquiao/Cotto, Pacquiao/Mosley — are small potatoes in comparison. The Bobfather is as savvy a boxing guy as you’re going to come across in the game. But first and foremost, he’s a bid-ness man, and right now he’s on the short end of a potentially massive deal with a very big fish. And what else do you do in such a situation besides let that big fish know that there are other big fish in the sea?

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Guess what? other potentially interesting opponents left to fight in the middleweight division, World Boxing Council/World Boxing Organization (WBC/WBO) middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (34-1, 30 KOs) may be looking at a unification bout with IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (28-0, 23 KOs) in 2009.

According to the latest boxing gossip, Abraham’s promoter, Wilfried Sauerland, is looking to line up Abraham with a fight against Pavlik in 2009. Previously, it was thought that Abraham would be going after a match with WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm, but apparently the money isn’t there for a fight between the two German-based fighters.

Besides, the bout wouldn’t likely make as much money as unification bout between Abraham and Pavlik would, a fight which likely takes place in the U.S., if the arrangements can be ironed out between the two fighters. Pavlik, 26, was recently beaten badly by 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins in a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision loss on October 18th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The fight was never close to speak of, and there seemed to be inevitability about the outcome after Hopkins dominated the first two rounds of the fight. Most boxing experts picked Pavlik to win the fight, but he was badly out-gunned by the faster, more highly skilled Hopkins. For Pavlik, it was a humiliating fight and he was thoroughly schooled by Hopkins in virtually every round of the fight.

So, now, Pavlik needs a big win over a big named opponent, and a fight against Abraham would be the perfect fight to start down the road to undoing some of the damage that was done from the loss to Hopkins. That’s not to say that a win over Abraham will be able to erase the stigma from the defeat, but it will undo some of the damage at least.

For Pavlik to be fully brought back to what he was, he’s going to need to continue winning for the next 3-5 years, and hope he can line up as many big-named opponents like Abraham as possible for which he can resurrect his reputation. Under the best scenario, Pavlik would lure Hopkins into giving him a rematch as fast as possible, so as to avoid giving Hopkins as excuse about his age being a factor, and then beating him badly to clear his name.

Right now, that doesn’t seem possible, because Hopkins won’t fight him again due to the one-sided nature of the fight, and likewise, the big cable companies wouldn’t be interested in showing another fight between Hopkins and Pavlik.

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