Ruslan Provodnikov is now trained by Freddie Roach.

Yeah, Roach does have "honorary/deputy/emeritus coach" status for a lot of the guys alleged to be in his stable. There is no way he has enough hands-on face time for more than a very small fraction of them. Pacquiao, obviously...Khan and maybe a handful of others.

It isn't like the news was reported as "Provodnikov starts training at WC", though. It would have been stupid for me to announce that he's trained by Roach if that is all that was said. Montoya and Kim specifically said he was newly under the tutelage of Freddie himself, else I wouldn't have repeated it as such. :good So if they don't actually wind up working one-on-one, blame those guys. Don't shoot the relay messenger. :yep

 

Come to ponder on it, is there even a distinct style of "Freddie Roach fighter"? :think

My initial thought was that Ruslan wasn't his usual type (thinking of the fast flurryers, which the Russian is very much not) but after thinking on it more the only real commonality between his trainees are that they all tend to be aggressors who like to come forward and emphasize power punches. Other than that, they are pretty varied.

I mean, Pacquiao and Khan fight similarly but that has more to do with parallels in their natural attributes and the foundations they each had before setting foot in California. Neither is anything like Toney (who some will remember was previously Roach's prize pupil and stable star, before Pac really got big...and James himself got big in a less flattering way...)

I don't know that there is a set identifiable Roach style so much as he just finds existing positives in every lump of clay that comes into his grasp, and sculps them to accentuate those positives.

If Ruslan gets some doting and isn't left like another of so many piglets climbing and stomping desperately to get a teat under their snouts, this could be pretty good for him. He won't become a defensive wizard; he was never fated to be one. Roach can take the existing positives of his offence and really jif 'em up, though. That's kind of a scary proposition for anyone tossed in the arena with him.