By Edward Chaykovsky
Trainer Jeff Mayweather, who is also the uncle of retired pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr., says a lot of people are overhyping the accomplishments of Hall of Fame coach Freddie Roach.
In particular, he brings up Miguel Cotto's recent run of success with Roach in his corner. After suffering back to back defeats to Mayweather and Austin Trout, Cotto hired Roach in 2013. Two fights later he stopped Sergio Martinez for the WBC middleweight championship.
Jeff is not the first trainer, or the last, to complain about Roach getting too many awards and press clippings over his corner work.
During several interviews, Roach said he was confident of Cotto being able to beat Mayweather - if he was working the corner of the Puerto Rican star. In a competitive fight, Cotto lost a twelve round decision to Mayweather in 2012.
"The one thing is this, for some reason they want to make Freddie Roach greater than what he is, just like when Cotto beat Martinez — who had one leg — next thing they want to do is give Freddie all the praise. Freddie Roach didn’t do nothing, Sergio Martinez couldn’t stand up, he fell on his own," Jeff told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.
Jeff then touched on Roach's prediction of Manny Pacquiao having more of a shot to beat Mayweather if the fight had taken place five years ago when they first started negotiating. The two fighters finally clashed on May 2nd, with Mayweather winning a twelve round unanimous decision.
"It didn’t make any difference whenever Manny fought Floyd, what happened was gonna happen anyways. At the end of the day, there’s no shame in losing to Floyd because the one thing is this, Manny lost to him just like everybody else," Jeff said.
