Top trainer Freddie Roach said on Friday that he will order Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao to report for training at the Wild Card Boxing Club in the first week of August as he expects a tough outing for his No. 1 ringster.”I will ask him to come here on August 1,” Roach said from the Wild Card on Vine Street in Hollywood, California. Top Rank has yet to name Pacquiao?s next foe although Mexican Humberto “La Zorrita” Soto is the leading candidate to be in the opposite corner of the Filipino puncher on Oct. 6 at the 19,000-seat GM Place in Vancouver, Canada. Top Rank chairman Bob Arum will make an announcement regarding the matter on Monday or Tuesday regardless of the result of the mediation being presided over by retired judge Daniel Weinstein. Top Rank and GBP are squaring it out for the right to promote Pacquiao, who agreed to have signed contracts with the two firms last year.
——————————————————————————– Meanwhile, GBP fighter Marco Antonio Barrera, who is aching to get a rematch with Pacquiao, told the daily Mexican paper Esto that a second meeting with the GenSan lefty is foremost on his mind. “I want another fight with Pacquiao and I would like to get back at him,” Barrera, who suffered a stinging 11th-round knockout in Nov. 2003 in San Antonio, Texas. Barrera is in Las Vegas to watch a major fight there being promoted by Top Rank. “Barrera is going to put more pressure on GBP (to push for a Pacquiao rematch),” said somebody who is privy to the mediation. Barrera, one of Mexico’s most accomplished fighters ever, wants to retire at the end of the year. Pacquiao hasn’t fought since stopping Jorge Solis on April 14 in Texas.
