By Mark Vester
During a media event in Las Vegas, BoxingScene spoke with hall-of-fame trainer Freddie Roach regarding the November trilogy bout between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales.
While many experts in the sport think Morales is washed-up, Roach feels they are wrong. According to Roach, fans will see the best Erik Morales ever, and Pacquiao will have the toughest fight of his career.
"He was embarrassed in the second fight. He's a proud person. He's a fighter. This is going to be the toughest fight of Manny's life," Roach said.
After draining himself to make weight for the second fight, conditioning became a factor for Morales. Roach thinks conditioning will be the key to victory. He doubts Morales will be able to go the full twelve rounds, but they are prepared to go the distance if needed.
"We are going to go in and knock him out in the first seven. We are going to put pressure on him for every minute of every round and find out what kind of condition he's really in. We are going to be ready to go twelve hard, hard rounds," he said.
Morales is taking extra steps to ensure he makes the weight limit of 130 pounds, and does not drain himself to the point of exhaustion to make the weight. Currently he is going through a special training facility in Los Angeles to prepare himself for the actual training camp for the November 18 fight. Extra steps that Roach says will not help Morales in the fight.
"Sounds like a Rocky story to me. We're going to be in the Wild Card training our asses off the old way, the hard way. New Velocity Gym? Good luck to him. Sounds like he gained a lot of weight. I think he's going to have to concentrate more on losing weight than training for a fight to be honest with you. We're going to be training for the fight," he said.
Roach stressed that they will not fall into the same trap as they did in the first fight. When the first fight was signed, Morales was coming off a bad loss to rival Marco Antonio Barrera, which made the Pacquiao camp not take the fight as seriously as they should have. Roach admits that they thought Morales was washed-up and looking for a quick buck. Morales is a fighter that Roach will never overlook again. He is going to make Pacquiao go through the toughest training camp of his career to prepare for the fight.
"We lost the first fight. I made an excuse and said that we took him lightly. I think we did take him lightly because we thought he was washed-up and just taking a payday. Whenever you lose, there is always something out there. That's the nature of the beast. There is always something that didn’t go right in training camp. Nothing is perfect in camp. You always have some reason as to why it happened, but that's why there is always comebacks and room for improvement," said Roach.