Manny Pacquiao could face Gennadiy Golovkin, says Freddie Roach

Freddie Roach has revealed that Manny Pacquiao 62-7-2 (39) would like to face Gennadiy Golovkin 40-1-1 (35) despite admitting that the eight-division world champion would be unlikely to fight at 160-pounds.

The 41-year-old Filipino phenom has not fought since lifting the WBA welterweight championship from Keith Thurman by split decision in Las Vegas in July last year.

Golovkin, 38, claimed the vacant IBF middleweight title with a tougher than expected points win over Sergiy Derevyanchenko in New York last October.

Roach, who trained Pacquiao for 16 years before being relegated to an assistant coaching role, says they are only looking for marquee fights.

“There are always good fights out there,” Roach told DAZN.

“The one thing about Manny is he doesn’t want to beat anybody; he wants to beat the best out there, he wants to fight the top guys.

“Mikey Garcia has called him out a couple of times, I think that’s a good fight for him, of course.

“Robert [Garcia] called him out on one of your shows, that made me smile because I like that fight for Manny, I think it’s a great fight.

“But the thing is Manny maybe might want to go a little higher and fight GGG or one of those guys who is supposed to be one of the best in the world today.

“Pacquiao still desires to be the best there is.”

Despite naming Golovkin as a potential target, Roach isn’t convinced Pacquiao should fight at the middleweight limit.

“No. I would not advise him to go 160lbs, that would be a little crazy. ‘But putting him at 147lbs was a risk at one time.

“People would go to me, ‘why are you moving him up to 147lbs?’, but he was very natural at that weight, he made the weight pretty good.

“He can make 140lbs pretty easy, he can actually make 135lbs but that’s a little bit more effort.

“But to fight the biggest guys at 147lbs with the money, it made good sense to all of us to fight the great Oscar [De La Hoya]. It was a great deal and it worked out really well for us.”