Marcos Villegas, Fight Hub TV
Have you spoken to Manny? How is he doing?
Freddie Roach
He's good. He's started running. He's playing basketball every day to stay in shape, now he's doing road work. He's hungry to get back in the ring. He wanted to fight in April, I told him no, we need a longer rest. With all the facts about concussions and so forth, these guys need a longer rest in between hard fights like that. That was a bad knockout. I'm very interested to see how Manny is when I get in the gym with him. If he's 100%, we'll go. If he's not, we'll talk about it and we'll make the right decision.
Marcos Villegas, Fight Hub TV
Good idea or bad idea to have him train out in the Philippines in your opinion?
Freddie Roach
Good idea. Hour and a half away from Macao, no jet lag. If I brought him here to train him here to fight over there and have to deal with jet lag and so forth, that wouldn't be good. It's the wrong thing to do. I'm sacrificing myself. I'm going to Mindanao, which is a tough place to go in the Philippines. I'll probably have to have two bodyguards with me at all times. And the bodyguards have machine guns. They may want to kidnap me.
Marcos Villegas, Fight Hub TV
I hope not! Are you aware of the comments that Mayweather made in the press about Manny, calling him a has-been and saying negative things?
Freddie Roach
Well, you know, Floyd fought a great fight his last fight, a little bit boring, but technically a good fight. I expect the same thing with Canelo. But I do say this: he has four fights left with the contract, right? There's not four guys in the world he can fight without ducking Manny Pacquiao, I feel. Who's he gonna fight, Devon Alexander next? I mean, come on. If Pacquiao's performance against Rios is great, which I expect it to be, I think that fight is alive again. I think he has to fight us. I think he needs to prove it, that we're washed up. Let's see what he has. I think he's a little washed up, too.
Marcos Villegas, Fight Hub TV
It's a really crucial fight for Manny given what happened and that knockout, some would say, kind of took a lot of momentum from him, and more or less diminished his star power.
Freddie Roach
Yeah, it definitely did. Nobody talks about Mayweather-Pacquiao anymore. There's other fights out there, Canelo, Chavez, stuff like that. There's bigger fights out there because of Manny's loss. But if he comes back well in this fight and then if Marquez wants to fight a rematch and we knock him out, then we go on.
Marcos Villegas, Fight Hub TV
You'll go on to the Mayweather fight?
Freddie Roach
Yes.