Roach boards flight to NY Hall of Fame

LAS VEGAS – Freddie Roach boarded a private plane for New York just a couple of hours after Manny Pacquiao took a stunning loss to Timothy Bradley at the MGM Grand.

It must have been a lonely flight for the trainer scheduled to be enshrined into boxing’s Hall of Fame Sunday afternoon in Canastota, New York.

Roach must have had so many things in his mind he might lose sleep.

“I thought we won the fight,” said Roach, who couldn’t believe his ears when Michael Buffer announced the final decision.

The judges awarded Bradley the split decision when Pacquiao clearly had full control of the match.

Roach said Pacquiao must have felt the same way, too, that he found the luxury to give away a couple of rounds late in the match.

“I told him after he gave away the eleventh round to pick it up, and knock this guy out,” said Roach.

But instead it was Bradley who answered the final bell the way it should be, throwing an early combination that forced Pacquiao to backpedal.

All three judges gave Bradley the final round.

“Let’s knock out this guy,” Roach practically begged Pacquiao during the final break.

Pacquiao didn’t knock Bradley out, paving the way for the controversial decision, and easily the upset of the year.

Roach couldn’t understand what the judges were thinking.

“I think they had their eyes closed. I’m not sure. Something wasn’t right,” he said after only his second loss with Pacquiao in a dozen years.

“What we saw and what they saw were two different things,” he said, adding that even by reversing the decision, the judges’ scores still wouldn’t be right.

“I didn’t see that many close rounds,” he said.

Well, the judges did.