This is a great story.
Really.
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Five years ago, Freddie Roach had never seen Manny Pacquiao. Roach was gaining recognition as one of boxing’s elite trainers and his stable was brimming with many of the greatest names in the game.
One day in early 2001, Pacquiao showed up outside of Roach’s Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif., and asked the trainer to check out his skills.
Roach, who served an apprenticeship under late Hall of Fame trainer Eddie Futch, agreed.
For more than half a century, a steady stream of boxing managers, agents and promoters beat a path to Futch’s door, begging him to evaluate their latest find.
As his reputation grew, Roach was experiencing the same thing. So he invited Pacquiao into the tiny sweatshop that serves as his headquarters and watched him work out.
Roach soon was awed. He saw that rare combination of speed, power, timing and footwork.
“I thought to myself, ‘This kid could be great,’ ” Roach said.
Roach quickly signed on as his trainer and immediately began preaching the gospel of Pacquiao.
That June, Roach unveiled his prodigy against Lehlohonolo Ledwaba, who held a super bantamweight title for two years and was regarded by many as the top man in the division.
Ledwaba, a heavy-handed destroyer, was expected to have little trouble dispatching the unheralded Filipino.
But Roach knew differently.
“I saw the guy in the gym and I knew it’s not every day someone like that walks in your front door,” he said. “We were talking about someone pretty special.”
Someone who could soon be great.
Pacquiao overwhelmed Ledwaba, proving Roach was every bit as astute as his mentor. Pacquiao was hailed as a superstar. HBO couldn’t wait to make a deal with him. The big names all wanted a piece of him.
And, at least in the minds of those who write about boxing, it was the day that Manny Pacquiao became great.
He has been one of the most prominent fighters since. Pacquiao’s popularity in his native Philippines dwarfs the adoration that, say, Michael Jordan receives here.
Pacquiao has become a star, but, as exciting as he’s been, he has yet to fulfill Roach’s prophesy of greatness.
His first bout after the Ledwaba fight was a foul-fest against Agapito Sanchez. It ended after six rounds when Pacquiao was cut by an inadvertent head-butt. The result was a technical draw, but Sanchez would have won a split decision had he not been docked two points for fouls.
Pacquiao stunned the world when he stopped the great Marco Antonio Barrera in 2003, but he couldn’t beat Juan Manuel Marquez despite knocking him down three times in the first round.
Then, Pacquiao lost to Erik Morales on March 19. Although the bout was highly entertaining fight, not even Pacquiao has disputed the scoring.
It’s an uneven record, but clearly the boxing world is smitten.
An Internet search on Google.com for “Manny Pacquiao” and “great” will generate 140,000 results.
That’s a pretty big number, though it’s considerably smaller than the 805,000 results generated by a search for “Erik Morales” and “great.”
And it’s dwarfed by the more than 44 million results produced by entering “George W. Bush” and “great.” (Though, in fairness to the liberals of the world, doing a Google search for “George W. Bush” and “great mistake” produces more than 10 million results).
It’s Roach, of all people, who douses the flame of Pacquiao’s greatness. When asked if Pacquiao has become the fighter he had expected, the trainer said, “Not yet.”
“He does some things in every fight that are, I don’t want to say not professional, but, well, let’s say we just have to call him down a lot,” Roach said. “You still haven’t seen the whole package. Manny has great, great talent, but he hasn’t gotten everything out of his talent like I thought he would have by now.”
Pacquiao gets his rematch with Morales tonight at the Thomas & Mack Center, with promoter Bob Arum predicting “a great, great fight between two great champeens.”
Morales is 48-3 and has won world titles in three weight classes. He’s all but guaranteed a spot in the Hall of Fame five years after retirement.
For Pacquiao to beat a guy with that kind of resume, there is no doubt: He’ll have to be great.
Kevin Iole’s boxing column is published Saturday. Reach him at 396-4428 or at [email protected].
