IT’S BEEN a while since Freddie Roach and Manny Pacquiao have talked and it just took a call to the Wild Card by a newspaperman for the master and his prized pupil to get reacquainted once more.
“If you get to talk to Manny, tell him to call me,” Roach said late yesterday morning after another grueling day at the famed sweat shop on Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
After an exchange of calls minutes later, the phone rang at the Wild Card and it was the gym’s star boxer on the line asking for the man refered by many Filipinos as ‘Coach Freddie.’
“I felt good talking to him because it’s been a while since we’ve talked,” said Roach, who had attempted to talk to the 28-year-old southpaw a few times but was told that he was either “playing billiards or was in a meeting.”
With Pacquiao on the line, Roach did not wast time in telling the fighter his stand on various issues surrounding boxing’s most exciting performer.
“I told him that boxing is a full-time job,” said Roach, obviously in reference to Pacquiao’s political plans. “He told me that he can take care of both.”
Still, Roach advised Pacquiao to immediately pack his bags and head for the US so he could start training for a showdown with unbeaten Mexican Jorge Solis on April 14 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
“You don’t take someone lightly because like everyone else, they all want to beat you and be on top of the world,” said Roach.
Roach, who began training Pacquiao in mid-2001, said he will fly to Puerto Rico with Oscar De La Hoya upon the conclusion of an eight-day, 11-city promotional tour that will take him and De La Hoya across the US for De La Hoya’s May 5 bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
“I want to talk to meet him before I leave that’s why I would like to see him here by the end of the month. He can either train here at the Wild Card or go with me in Puerto Rico. He is welcome there to train in the day-time since Oscar will train at night.”
Roach heaved a sigh of relief when Pacquiao told him that he’d fly there sometime next week to start his training.
But Pacquiao’s lawyer Franklin Gacal, informed that Roach is looking forward to see Pacquiao there before the month ends, said it wasn’t likely that the fighter will be able to leave that early.
“I doubt (that Pacquiao will leave next week). Maybe first week of March,” Gacal said in a text message.
Pacquiao is so immersed in his bid to run for a Congress seat in the first district of South Cotabato that boxing seems to be a far second on his list of priorities these days.
