Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. pose for the media during the final press conference held at the KA Theatre in MGM Grand, Las Vegas Nevada on Wednesday, 29 April 2015. PHOTO BY REM ZAMORA/INQUIRER/See more FRAME
LAS VEGAS — Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. may have toned down the trash talk during the events leading up to Saturday’s super fight but the verbal exchange between trainers Freddie Roach and Floyd Mayweather Sr. is heating up.
Roach offered a few words for Mayweather Sr., who had been constantly referring to the Hall of Fame trainer as a “joke.”
“He’s never beat me ever. I mean, he never will. So I’m not really worried about him,” Roach told Filipino reporters of Mayweather.
Roach fired back after Mayweather Sr. had called him “a joke with no hope” during a media scrum Thursday afternoon.
“He’s never come close [to winning Trainer of the Year]. He’s a joke. I mean, let’s face it,” added Roach, who is a seven-time Trainer of the Year. “He calls me the joke but Roger’s a better trainer than him. He knows it and he shouldn’t be in the corner.”
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Roger Mayweather, the uncle of the pound-for-pound king, normally serves as the chief trainer but health issues prevented him from assuming the position this time, pushing Floyd Sr. in charge of his son’s corner.
“He can’t even get his message across because he gets so nervous in the corner he stutters the whole time. You can’t even understand him. Floyd’s training himself. That guy has nothing to do with nothing,” Roach said.
The trash talk between the two coaches had been going on for months now with Floyd Sr. even hitting below the belt when he referred to Roach’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease in an interview last month.
So while the two welterweight champions set for a Saturday showdown have remained subdued over the course of the buildup to their megafight, the verbal war between Roach and Floyd Sr. doesn’t seem to be headed for a ceasefire anytime soon.