One has to wonder if any of Roach’s pupils will return after the De La Hoya dust settles. Roach has made a decision that makes dollars, but in the long term, does it really make sense? More importantly who can recall in the history of boxing when a trainer, with several elite fighters facing big bouts, turned his back on them to take on a new client for big bucks. It stinks. And Roach should be ashamed. See: http://www.pound4pound.com/FightReport/2007/RoachBurningBridges.htm
“I know Teddy personally. … I’ve had a couple altercations with him?.”I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me. That’s how it is. It’s the first time we’re facing each other, so it’s a little competitive. “When I took over Michael Moorer, a lot of bad things happened. I was hired because Teddy had quit. They hired me and we had some words, and they weren’t good.”
?I don?t care what [Roach] thinks,? Atlas said on a video posted by HBO. ?I?ve been in this business 40 years, longer than him. I?m more than a passenger with [Bradley], more than a guy going along with something that I shouldn?t go along with.?
The fact is ?…it is their similarities that make the friction between them such a jumble of contradictions…?
But what most observers may be missing is that the animosity started when the then- Roach- trained Peter Manfredo was fighting Joe Calzaghe in Cardiff in 2007 under Freddie ?s tutelage but Freddie could not be at the fight because he was in Puerto Rico training Oscar de la Hoya for his mega fight against Floyd Mayweather?and for mega bucks. Thus Manfredo?s corner was left in charge of Peter?s father with whom the son had a complex relationship as explained below:
“My dad didn’t want me to go for The Contender but I did it. And afterwards he was very hard on me because I lost. That’s when I left him again to go work with Freddie. Then he called me and we sorted it out – but he had to know Freddie was my main man. It goes back to when I was a kid. I went to a Catholic school and every afternoon I’d go to the gym in my uniform. And then my father would train me so hard I had no time to be a normal kid.?
Atlas, the Announcer, was all over this saying how a trainer should never be missing in action and letting his fighter down like this. It was clear that Teddy had little respect for Roach at that point. And that?s when the real snakebite might have been put in the coffee.
