Floyd Mayweather Jr put on hold as Manny Pacquiao considers becoming eighth wonder

The contest that every boxing fan wants to see may have to wait because Manny Pacquiao is being groomed for an even more audacious challenge before he takes on his last great, unconquered rival, Floyd Mayweather Jr.

While the deal-makers work on Pacquiao-Mayweather, Freddie Roach, the Filipino’s trainer, has ambitions for his boxer to go up yet another weight and claim a world title at an eighth weight division. Roach, specifically, has his eyes on Yuri Foreman, the New York-based Israeli, who is the World Boxing Association light-middleweight champion.

Pacquiao won his first world title at flyweight, which is up to eight stone. If he moves up another weight he will be competing at 11 stone.

The 30-year-old was already breaking new ground when he beat Miguel Cotto, on November 14, to win a world title in a seventh different weight division. It was after that victory at welterweight that he said that he believed his ascent through the weights had come to a natural end. However, Roach clearly has other ideas — and Pacquiao tends to follow his advice.

“The Mayweather fight is the fight the world wants to see,” Roach said. “It’s going to be the biggest pay-per-view fight of all time. But I think we will fight one fight before that.”

Roach said that Pacquiao’s schedule will be constructed around his political ambitions and the elections in the Philippines on May 10. “But there is a March date for him to fight,” Roach said. “People think I am crazy but I want him to win his eighth title against Yuri Foreman at 154lb. That’s my idea — then fight Mayweather in September. And then retire.”

The way Roach sees it, there will be no further blemishes on Pacquiao’s record by the time he greets retirement, although he does concede that Mayweather will be “the hardest fight of his life”.

“Mayweather’s a very difficult fight for Manny,” he said. “It won’t be physically the hardest, but it will be the hardest fight of his life style-wise. Mayweather is talented and he’s good at defence. I have a very good game plan for him, but I’m sure a lot of other guys thought that along the way.

“We’ll have a ten-week training camp. We have to work on a lot of new moves, we have to improve in certain areas to win that fight.” And would he expect his man to win? “Oh yes. Without a doubt.”

This is, of course, a different view to that espoused by Mayweather after he had witnessed Pacquiao’s brutal demolition of Cotto. Mayweather described Pacquiao as “easy work, easy fight. I don’t see no versatility in Manny Pacquiao. I see just a fighter, you know, a good puncher, but just one dimension.”

It is not as if it would need Mayweather’s familiar bragging to sell this one, but he may have to bite his tongue for a while. If Roach gets his way, Pacquiao’s first stop is with Foreman, who was born in Belarus when it was still part of the Soviet Union.

The 29-year-old moved to Israel when he was 9 and is as serious about Judaism as he is about his boxing. Foreman boxes with the Star of David stitched on to his shorts and he is also an aspiring rabbi.