SACRAMENTO — Funny things are happening on the way to the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas where Manny Pacquiao fights Juan Manuel Marquez for his super featherweight belt come March 15.
While the excitement builds for this pay-per-view bout pitting the Filipino ring superstar and the Mexican champ once more — Marco Antonio Barrera, who lost to both fighters, is hanging out in Margaritaville, right?
Well, hold the applause. Looks like the laid-back lifestyle in tropical Mexico is not suiting Marco at all.
Internet boxing circles are abuzz with talk that, despite the wear and tear of 70 career bouts, the 33-year-old Barrera is seeking an opponent.
His target date for a fight, says boxing blogger Andrew Eisele, is May or June.
Barrera?s potential opponent? Current IBF champ Mzonke Fana who Marco Antonio stopped in two rounds in 2005.
Facing Pacquiao again is a distant possibility for Barrera. But why is he seeking a return to the spotlight?
?Because he?s a fighter and fighters are never truly retired, they are just in between fights,? says Eisele.
The Marco caper is not the only perplexing piece of news that seems to go through Pacquiao.
Internet reports say Oscar De La Hoya has dumped trainer Freddie Roach to rejoin his old trainer for the final three fights of his career.
Floyd Mayweather Sr. will take charge of Oscar?s mental and physical calisthenics for the fights, which, oddly enough, include that with Mayweather?s son, Floyd Jr.
Veteran sportswriter Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports said De La Hoya had a pleasant conversation with Roach on Thursday to tell Freddie of his dismissal. Iole said De La Hoya lauded Roach for the good training for his first fight with Floyd Jr., which he lost. ?I told him (Freddie) that I thought we could work together again, if not with he and I but with Golden Boy. I just didn?t obey his commands (in the match against Mayweather),? Yahoo Sports quoted De La Hoya.
Iole also reported: ?Roach?s side was prepared to lose the De La Hoya gig anyway because Roach is training Manny Pacquiao for his March 15 rematch against Juan Manuel Marquez and is co-training Bernard Hopkins for his April 19 bout with Joe Calzaghe. He?s working with both Pacquiao and Calzaghe at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, California.?
* * *
THE keepers of our great Olympic-style boxing legacy — silver medalists Anthony Villanueva and Mansueto ?Onyok? Velasco, who both inspired generations of ring fans — are probably vexed to the max.
And rightly so.
With our campaign for more fistic qualifiers to Beijing in tatters, these gentlemen need no soaring rhetoric (translation: excuses) from leaders of our ill-fated team to Bangkok.
All these gentlemen desire is a ray of hope that they can place the mantle of their Olympic-style boxing heritage on someone?s fists — if not this year, maybe by the next Summer Games in London in 2012.
There is no doubt that the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines is committed to seeing the first Filipino gold medal winner in the Olympics.
But the extraordinary demands of the Olympics call for a new generation of boxers and a new generation of leadership.
