Roach says Pacquiao good for only two more fights

CEBU, Philippines — As far as Freddie Roach is concerned, Filipino sports hero Manny Pacquiao is good for only two more fights.

After that, the Hall of Fame trainer said it is best for the 41-year-old Pacquiao to retire from boxing and bring his battle into the political ring in pursuit of his ambition to become president  of the Philippines.

“I’ve had discussions with Manny on having two more fights for his career and then maybe (stay) in the politician side of it,” Roach told Dan Rafael of boxingscene.com.

“Manny would like to fight a couple of more times and then run for the presidency of his country,” added Roach. “The first fighter to ever do that and it will be another part of his history and I think he will be really good at.”

Roach, who owns the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, hopes that Pacquiao could fight before the year ends although he admits that it all depends on the situation.

Roach said he already talked to Pacquiao about the potential opponents for the only eight-division world champion in history. Included in their list are the undefeated WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford, four-division world titleholder Mikey Garcia, and the retired Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Of the three, Roach likes Garcia the most to take on Pacquiao, who currently reigns as the unified WBA welterweight king.

“We talked about opponents and a couple of names come up here, a couple of names come up there. There are a lot of names coming up and so forth. I kind of like Mikey Garcia. I think that’s a really, really good fight,” Roach said.

About Crawford , Roach thinks that he’s a very good fighter and maybe one of the toughest fights in the world for Manny.

“But it wouldn’t be somebody I would turn down,” Roach said. “The thing about Manny is he doesn’t just want to fight. He doesn’t just want to fight opponents and so forth. He wants to fight the best guys out there.” — EBV