IT’S GOING to be a busy weekend starting tomorrow for boxing star Manny Pacquiao as well as members of his entourage and even the fighter’s local and US management team. American handlers Shelly Finkel and Nicholas Khan and trainer Freddie Roach are planing in from Los Angeles tomorrow morning to discuss the merits of the proposed tuneup bout with Mexican Oscar Larios in late-June or early-July at the Araneta Coliseum, said Pacquiao.
“It’s going to be a hectic couple of days when we get there,” Khan told the Bulletin yesterday. “We may even have a press conference on Saturday.”
While it is ABS-CBN that will bankroll the Pacquiao-Larios showdown, Pacquiao’s own outfit MP Promotions will take care of all boxing matters like the choice of fighters seeing action in the undercard with the boxer’s right-hand man Wakee Salud at the helm.
Salud, who steered Dodie Boy and Gerry Penalosa and Malcolm Tunacao to world titles, is arriving from Cebu tonight to meet the American bigwigs.
To prepare for the mega-event, an office with a big conference room at the 14th floor of the Tektite Tower at the Ortigas Center in Pasig will be inaugurated tomorrow afternoon.
“That will be the nerve center of the promotion,” said Pacquiao.
Finkel told boxingtalk.net that Larios is a livewire opponent, but “Pacquiao should win and win in fashion.”
Golden Boy Promotions (GBP) vice-president Eric Gomez said over the weekend that Larios will be armed to the teeth when he gets the chance to slug it out with Pacquiao.
“Oscar (Larios) is more than willing to come to the Philippines. He even wants to swim all the way from Mexico. That’s how determined he is to fight Pacquiao.”
There is a talk that the Pacquiao-Larios fight will also be co-promoted by GBP, which is bidding to stage a rematch involving the Filipino and Marco Antonio Barrera for Nov. 4 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Even GBP president Oscar dela Hoya, in a teleconference call from his training camp in Puerto Rico, told Cebu and Manila-based scribes in the Queen City that he is willing to work with Pacquiao as evidenced by his company’s tieup with a Filipino-owned firm, Tony Aldeguer’s ALA Boxing Club.
Meanwhile, the latest issue of The Ring magazine (June 2006) had Dela Hoya, Arturo Gatti and Pacquiao sharing the cover.
This is not the first time that Pacquiao has been put on the cover, having been featured on the cover of KO magazine, UK’s Boxing Monthly and more recently, World Boxing, which had the GenSan lefty as the sole fighter on its cover.
