Freddie Roach Acing Role as Main Instigator in Lead-Up to Mayweather-Pacquiao

If it’s not step one of every scribe’s May 2 instruction manual, it ought to be.

When you’re writing about the big fight and need a big quote, call Freddie Roach.

Though his adversaries from the “Money Team” were generally labeled the go-to rabble-rousers when things went public in late February, the 55-year-old trainer has emerged as the undisputed champion of bluster and bombast for a mega-promotion that’s been far more calm than contentious.

In fact, where Floyd Mayweather Jr. has gone cordial and Manny Pacquiao has stayed holy, it’s been largely left to Roach to be a go-to source for what little bulletin-board material has been generated.

The seven-time honoree of the Boxing Writers Association of America laid the foundation for subsequent blather at the March 11 press conference in Los Angeles—an event where, as others traipsed hesitantly while avoiding controversy, he came out with lungs a' blazing.

“This is the biggest challenge of my life. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long, long time,” he said. “We’re fighting the best fighter in the world, but we’re gonna kick his ass.”

“I’m sorry,” he added, as he looked toward his target, two seats to his right, “but good luck, Floyd.”

Mayweather didn’t look up from the drink he was sipping. Nevertheless, the lines were drawn.

And Roach has shown zero shyness in crossing them.

He took to Jim Rome-hosted airwaves two days later to question Money’s chops as a role model, and he brazenly suggested that his father/trainer’s nervousness between rounds leads to stuttered instruction that’ll leave Mayweather “fighting by himself” come Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

But lest anyone think it’s just this spotlight that’s got Roach riled, think again.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

He earned trash-talk street cred prior to Pacquiao’s 2008 star turn against Oscar De La Hoya—whom Roach had trained against Mayweather 19 months earlier—presciently insisting that the Golden Boy could no longer “pull the trigger” before the Filipino battered him into an eight-round submission.

Ricky Hatton stepped into the crosshairs five months later when Roach promised his man would stop the Englishman—a reigning champion who’d never lost a fight at 140 pounds—in three rounds.

Pacquiao floored Hatton twice in the first round and stopped him with a left hook in the second.

Now, for a fight that’s been rumored, suggested and openly fantasized about from the split-second that an unconscious Hitman tumbled to the canvas, it’s hardly surprising that Freddie’s in good form.

And when Mayweather turned up late to a media workout, he reascended the verbal soapbox.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

“How selfish is that?” Roach said. “It doesn’t take a lot to figure out why everyone is rooting for Manny. Just look at which fighter has the most endorsements going into this fight and why. When Manny beats Mayweather, it won’t only be about unifying the welterweight titles, it will also be a public service.”

That claim certainly remains up for debate.

But what’s clearly beyond argument is how Roach has raised his chat game to superfight levels.

“(Mayweather) has been avoiding Manny for so long. He didn’t want this fight,” he said. “He can pretend it was a strategy to build up the fight’s value, but that’s not true. For once, Mayweather wasn’t able to handpick his opponent. He was forced to take this fight—by Manny, the media and the fans. His excuses for not making the fight haven’t held water for years, and Manny finally exposed him.

“Mayweather ran out of road.”

And if the byproduct of Pacquiao’s less-talk/more-work focus is a win, the fight world may just run out of superlatives for his No. 1 fan.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.