By Steve Kim
Freddie Roach had an excellent vantage point as Terence Crawford easily out-pointed his man Viktor Postol this past weekend at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to unify the WBC and WBO junior welterweight belts. There is now talk of matching Crawford with Manny Pacquiao, who is scheduled to resume his career on November 5th.
"It's a very tough match-up, Crawford showed that he can move for twelve rounds, he can run for twelve rounds. But y'know, in-between the running and so forth, when he does land punches he does land really powerful punches. He hurt my guy a lot. I know Postol's got a pretty good chin,"said the noted trainer on Monday morning from the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California.
"So Crawford's a pretty good puncher, he hits hard and he moves very well and emulates (Floyd) Mayweather quite a bit, I think. I think he's like a young Mayweather, right now."
And with that said, Roach may not want that Crawford fight for 'the Pac Man' just yet.
He admitted - "You know what, with Manny in the senate and I have to go to the Philippines and so forth to train him and with all the confusion going on - I don't think I'm going to accept that fight or want that fight right away. I mean give me one warm-up fight and give me a fight right after that and we can talk."
According to Roach, Pacquiao isn't just fighting on for the money.
"Manny still knows what he does best and that's fighting. The thing is if you want to say politics is a popularity contest, which is somewhat true. I believe this is what makes Manny so popular - it's the boxing. It's not being senator or anything like that. He hasn't proved he's a good senator, yet. But I know he'll try hard because he wants to help the people."
Steve Kim is the news editor for krikya360.com.