Roach muffles Mayweather Sr.

Freddie Roach on Saturday night did the predictable and the impossible.

The predictable: He devised a strategy that allowed his fighter, the best on the planet, to destroy an opponent who was nowhere near the improved version he swore up and down to be.

The impossible: He shut up fellow trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. as much as humanly possible.

“No comment,” Mayweather said immediately after Manny Pacquiao’s second-round knockout of Ricky Hatton. “That’s boxing. I really thought Ricky would get him. I don’t want to say any more than that.”

Oh, there is plenty to say.

Roach was masterful in his game plan and Pacquiao perfect in its execution in the junior welterweight title bout before yet another disappointed British majority at the MGM Grand Garden.

Yep, we’ve seen this movie before. I’m not sure Floyd Mayweather Jr. taught Hatton anything when he used speed and skill to score a 10th- round technical knockout in December 2007, but any lesson Hatton learned that night was dismissed the minute Pacquiao hit him.

Hatton was doing really well … for about 45 seconds. Then he got hit and forgot all about that technical stuff, taking a boxing match in Las Vegas and trying to make it a street brawl in Manchester.

Then he got absolutely mauled.

Sorry. Getting somebody like Hatton to change his ways is like trying to teach a bull not to go after the red cape with its horns. Like trying to teach Michael Buffer that tanning beds are bad for the skin.

Have you seen England’s soccer team?

Hatton is a mirror image. Whenever they face an opposing coach (or in this case, the world’s best boxing trainer) who plays a strategic match, the British revert back to their old ways on the pitch and obviously in the ring. They go all out, and someone like Brazil dribbles circles around them, or someone whacks Hatton’s jaw, and he begins plowing ahead.

Problem is, this time it came against such an elite boxer, such a terrific pound-for-pound king, it was frighteningly one-sided. Hatton was sent to the canvas twice in the first round, once on a right hook, then on a left.

He was sent to la-la land and ultimately Valley Hospital at 2:59 of the second with a terrific left that hit a Hatton mug more open than Randy Moss running a fly pattern against your kid’s Pop Warner team.

Said referee Kenny Bayless about declaring the fight over: “I didn’t have to count.”

“This was no surprise to me,” Roach said. “We always knew Hatton pumped his arms before throwing a punch and was a sucker for the right hook. We worked on it the entire camp. I studied every tape of (Hatton’s) for two months. He fights the same over and over. This is the result.”

Mayweather Sr. the past few weeks snubbed his nose at the concept of speed in a ring, at the idea that Pacquiao was far too fast for Hatton to defend.

“You can’t hit,” Mayweather said time and again, “what you can’t see.”

But you apparently can hit what doesn’t move.

What this also does is take much shine off Mayweather Jr.’s victory against Hatton. Mayweather needed time and energy to dismiss the popular Brit. Pacquiao needed Buffer to stop talking and a bell to ring.

They held a news conference at the MGM on Saturday morning to announce Mayweather Jr. — surprise, surprise — is coming out of retirement to fight Juan Manuel Marquez on July 18.

The unbeaten Mayweather said he has a list of potential opponents and included Pacquiao on it. Roach is convinced Mayweather ultimately will duck his fighter, that Pacquiao presents the type of challenge Floyd Jr. won’t accept.

You have to wonder if Roach also is correct about this after Saturday.

It certainly would be a longer and closer fight than what Pacquiao-Hatton offered. There actually would be two ridiculously quick and talented fighters in the ring.

But the Pacquiao we saw Saturday is at a level that perhaps even Mayweather’s incredible defense couldn’t impede.

It was shortly after Hatton’s head crashed to the canvas and his eyes rolled back and concerned bodies rushed into the ring when Pacquiao encountered his promoter.

“Are you happy?” he asked Bob Arum.

“You,” answered Arum, “are going to be the greatest fighter who ever lived.”

You will get no argument from Ricky Hatton today, assuming his faculties have returned to normal. You might get one from Floyd Mayweather Sr., but he wasn’t talking much for the first time in forever.

You see, poems don’t roll off the tongue as easily when your guy gets crushed.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.