Freddie Roach sits on a table near the ring in his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, fiddling with a roll of tape. He’s talking about how things have gone better than he could ever have hoped as Manny Pacquiao prepared to face Floyd Mayweather.
Roach drops the tape and points to an area in the center of his chest, just below the collarbone.
“Oh [expletive]!” Roach said, wincing at the thought before breaking into a giggle. “The other day, Manny hit me so [expletive] hard here I thought I’d been shot.”
There are easier ways to make a living than letting one of the game’s fittest, fastest and finest fighters batter your body for several hours a day.
Pacquiao fights Mayweather on Saturday at the MGM Grand in a fight that is going to do massive financial numbers.
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Trainer Freddie Roach, right, says Manny Pacquiao has been outstanding in camp. (AP) Expectations for the pay-per-view sales, already outlandishly high, were rocketing skyward Thursday.
One person working on the promotion who requested anonymity because no one is authorized to talk publicly about such matters suggested it’s now looking like the fight may surpass four million pay-per-views sold.
The record is just under 2.5 million, and there have been fewer than 25 fights that have exceeded one million.
It’s going to be a big fight, because of the money, because of the hype, and because it pits the two best fighters in the world against each other.
Yet, there is this sense among the media that Pacquiao doesn’t stand much of a chance. Veteran journalists are scoffing at the notion that he could somehow become the first man to defeat Mayweather in a 19-year career that includes 47 fights.
The fight’s PR team declined to release a poll it conducted with journalists because it was so one-sided in Mayweather’s favor.
[More Mayweather-Pacquiao coverage: How the fight was saved]
It’s three days before the fight, and Roach is nibbling at the remnants of his breakfast in the Delano. He’s sitting with a couple of his assistants and a friend. They’re talking about the fight.
“You know, it’s a tough fight for Manny, a real tough fight,” Roach said. “This isn’t going to be easy. We know that. But anyone who says Manny doesn’t have a chance is full of it. He’s had a great camp. A great camp.”
He has to be nearly perfect. Roach knows that. Top Rank’s Hall of Fame matchmaker, Bruce Trampler, knows that.
But Trampler, who has one of the sharpest eyes in the game and was a frequent visitor to camp, said it would be a mistake to sell Pacquiao short.
“I think he has a better chance than a lot of people think,” Trampler said.
Pacquiao’s publicist, Fred Sternburg, remarks about how loose and relaxed Pacquiao has been. Nothing has bothered him. He’s laughed and joked. He’s not much of a talker with the media, but at Wednesday’s news conference, he spoke from his heart, both from the dais and later in private interviews.
He was once a gambler himself. The longtime feud between Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions, which finally ended last year, began when the companies were fighting over Pacquiao.
Not long after Top Rank said it had signed him to a new promotional contract in 2006, Golden Boy president Oscar De La Hoya greeted Pacquiao’s plane when it landed at Los Angeles International Airport after a flight from the Philippines.
De La Hoya brought a suitcase filled with $250,000 in small bills and gave it to Pacquiao as an inducement to sign with Golden Boy. Pacquiao took the money, went to a local casino and gambled it all away.
It set off lawsuits and an eight-year feud that only ended after De La Hoya and then-Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer suddenly found themselves at odds.
