There’ll be a slight change in Manny Pacquiao’s training schedule today as he planes in from Cebu this afternoon to honor some commitments less than a month before the big fight.
According to insiders, Pacquiao will be brought to Manila by a private plane courtesy of a close friend from the north. He will stay for the night and fly back to Cebu tomorrow afternoon.
Pacquiao, according to his chief-of-staff Jake Joson, will run in the morning and will work out at the Rex “Wakee” Salud Gym at around 11 a.m. He normally goes to the gym at 2 p.m. for the two-hour workout. Pacquiao, who entered his third week of sparring yesterday, will proceed to the GMA-7 headquarters in Quezon City to shoot the primers for his Oct. 6 fight with Marco Antonio Barrera.
A couple more meetings, both involving his coming rematch with the great Mexican boxer, may take Pacquiao’s time the rest of the day. A guesting in a noontime show tomorrow is also on tap.
Then Pacquiao heads back to Cebu to resume training on Monday. He has two more weeks to train there before he flies to Los Angeles with Freddie Roach and Buboy Fernandez on Sept. 22 for the final push.
Roach is not joining the trip to Manila, saying he’d rather stay in Cebu.
“No. I’m not coming,” said Roach, assuring that the minor change in schedule won’t affect their preparations. “Of course, not. There’ll be no gap in training. We can’t afford that.”
Roach said he planned an eight-round sparring for Pacquiao yesterday. So far, they’ve logged 39 rounds of sparring, and counting the latest would give them a total 47.
“I don’t count,” said Roach, who said before the start that he wants no less than 130 rounds of sparring.
Pacquiao has yet to reach his peak in training where he’d spar 10 or 12 rounds a day.
But while Pacquiao is busy shooting primers, Barrera has his hands full of video tapes of old Pacquiao fights dating back to 2001, according to Mexican newspaper Esto.
