By Radio Rahim

Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach still regrets not pulling Manny Pacquiao from the May 2nd mega-match with Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The richest fight in boxing history had a lot of controversy following the conclusion of the show, after Pacquiao revealed that he entered the ring with pre-existing injury to his right shoulder. Pacquiao further injured himself in the fourth round and lost a twelve round unanimous decision before a sold-out MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

A few days after the match, Pacquiao had surgery on the shoulder and he's been recovering since that time.

Pacquiao's final fight is scheduled to take place in the early part of 2016. If Roach and Pacquiao had their way, they would go straight into a rematch with Mayweather. That fight is not on the table. Mayweather announced his retirement from the sport in September.

Roach believes Pacquiao would have had a much better shot at victory - with a healed right shoulder - but nobody was willing to cancel the fight with the fear of it possibly never happening. It took five years and two rival networks coming together to get the deal done. Nobody was willing to roll the dice on a postponement, says Roach.

“I always regret [not pulling him out] that because I was one of the ones who wanted to cancel the fight because of the injuries, but everyone else thought that if it don’t happen now it would never happen and there was so much money involved and so forth," Roach told BoxingScene.com.

"I know my heart was in the right place. He wasn’t going to win that fight one-handed, and I think we should have waited until he was healthy and we would have had a better shot, but that’s how things go in boxing."