IN A rarity, Top Rank chief Bob Arum and trainer Freddie Roach are singing the same tune. They both want Filipino boxing star Manny Pacquiao to report for training at the soonest possible time.
“He’s got to start training,” said Roach yesterday when contacted at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California, as the renowned cornerman can’t wait to get his hands on boxing’s most exciting fighter.
While there is still time for Pacquiao to attend to personal matters like the shooting of a movie and similar stuff, the 28-year-old super-featherweight should start tapering off in whatever is keeping him busy these past few days.
Pacquiao is booked to face Marco Antonio Barrera in a rematch on Oct. 6 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and ringsiders believe he might be taking the Mexican lightly owing to the fact that he was hardly threatened when he stopped him the first time in Nov. 2003.
“Manny’s coming over to the States next week,” said Arum, in time for the press conference on Aug. 8 that was originally planned for last Tuesday at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Arum revealed that the Pacquiao-Barrera brawl will be entitled “Will To Win” and Pacquiao cannot afford to take Barrera lightly.
The past few months, Arum and Roach had engaged in a verbal war over Pacquiao in relation with the then feud involving Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions (GBP).
Top Rank and GBP have since ironed out their differences and the two outfits are co-promoting one of the year’s top matchups at the 12,000-seat Events Center.
Pacquiao had earlier told Nonoy Neri, one of his training assistants, that he would train for two-and-a-half months for the Barrera encounter and they were originally scheduled to leave last month.
June became July and Pacquiao, Neri and Buboy Fernandez are still in the country and their departure has at least been postponed thrice already.
Still, Pacquiao is one of the most hard-working fighters in training and once he goes into training mode, it’s an impossibility to tell him to slow down.
