This one should really get into Oscar De La Hoya?s nerves. Trainer Freddie Roach recently showed up for the punch-mitt session at the Wild Card with Manny Pacquiao wearing a body shield with a picture of the Golden Boy ? smiling from ear to ear ? ?taped right smack in the middle,? reported Los Angeles-based orthodontist Ed De La Vega.
“Now that the weather has turned and the cool stiff air of fall has surfaced,” wrote De La Vega, who customizes Pacquiao?s mouthguard and a bevy of other Filipino ring talents in Southern California. “Roach wanted to heat up the gym, so to speak.”
Pacquiao and De La Hoya slug it out on Dec. 6 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in what is expected to turn out to be a blockbuster and a potential record-setter in terms of pay-per-view sales.
The position of De La Hoya?s picture was “much like the bull?s eye at the dart board” at Pacquiao?s two-bedroom apartment unit at The Palazzo in the trendy area of La Brea.
This is the second stunt Roach has pulled off following the toy gun incident during the San Francisco leg of the press tour last Oct. 4 that left everyone ? even De La Hoya himself ? in stitches.
Roach said he was slighted by De La Hoya?s remarks when the traveling circus was in Houston on Oct. 2 when De La Hoya boasted that there will come a time during his fight with Pacquiao that Roach will utter, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Anyway, in that Bay Area incident, Roach pulled out a plastic toy gun from a shopping bag, motioned towards De La Hoya and told him, “I found this gun. I can?t pull the trigger. It must be yours.”
It was in reference to Roach?s can?t-pull-the-trigger remark he delivered some weeks back when negotiations were underway for the 29-year-old Pacquiao and the 35-year-old De La Hoya to face off.
“But then again,” stressed De La Vega, “Roach?s latest antics could just be a joke to allow writers like me to have something else to write other than the usual good things happening at the Team Pacquiao training camp at the Wild Card Gym.”
Still, De La Hoya?s patience could be running thin with the latest exhibition of audacity on the part of Team Pacquiao.
Somewhere deep in the mountains of Big Bear, two hours by land from Tinseltown, a quick-witted member of De La Hoya?s team might now be thinking of coming up with a similar display of braggadocio as a way of keeping that trademark Latin temper in check.
