ROACH: He needed to restrain Pacquiao. ROY LUARCA
HOLLYWOOD—Manny Pacquiao may have failed to score a knockout win over Timothy Bradley but he did more than enough to satisfy his chief trainer, Freddie Roach.
The six-time Trainer of the Year said he saw Pacquiao’s grim determination to finish off Bradley but the American was just too tough to nail on the canvas.
Still, the convincing unanimous decision win was enough to make Roach happy.
“I’m satisfied,” said Roach, who had hoped for a Pacquiao victory by stoppage, at his Wild Card Gym on Monday. “He did well.”
Pacquiao fired rapid combinations—including a flurry of 12 punches when he caught Bradley at the ropes in the fourth round, the same round the American jarred the Filipino superstar with a haymaker.
Unrelenting in attack, Pacquiao had to be restrained by Roach for fear that his prized ward might run into a sneaky punch, like the one Juan Manuel Marquez knocked him out with in their fourth duel in December 2012.
Bradley, who bulked up to 160 pounds on Saturday night and fought a la Marquez, waited vainly for that single opening to knock out the lighter Pacquiao (149 lb). Roach said that, as planned, Pacquiao confounded Bradley with lateral movement.
He said Pacquiao’s only shortcoming was he failed to unload enough body punches to wear down the bigger Bradley.
With his accuracy and volume of punches, Pacquiao was already ahead on the judges’ scorecards by the seventh round, noted Roach.
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