HOLLYWOOD – Freddie Roach had seen enough. “I had a little problem the first 10 days with crowd control. I got mad one day and I lost it and I told them all where to go and I threw everyone out. They knew I was really upset and meant business and we had no problems from that point on.”
That was Roach, recalling how angry he became with the hordes of followers filling the gym in the Philippines where Manny Pacquiao trained for his super featherweight fight against Marco Antonio Barrera on Saturday at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
This is a rematch of a fight four years ago in San Antonio won by Pacquiao via 11th-round technical knockout. It was a fight in which Pacquiao demonstrated tremendous ferocity in taking apart Barrera, a great Mexican fighter who is nothing short of a living legend in his country.
Focus factor
Barrera has all the motivation a fighter could want. He wants to redeem himself in the worst way. Pacquiao, meanwhile, has become a national hero in his native Philippines and it makes some wonder just how immersed in his boxing career he really is.
“He is not focused on boxing,” said Eric Gomez, matchmaker for Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. Golden Boy
co-promotes Pacquiao along with Bob Arum. But Golden Boy is Barrera’s only promoter. That, Gomez said recently, was why he was picking Barrera to win this rematch. Pacquiao, 28, has been busy. He ran for Congress in May in the Philippines. Having acted in movies there since 1998, Pacquiao recently signed a deal to do a reality television show in his country.
Homeland hero
“He’s always been big, but I’ll tell you when it really started was after the second (Erik) Morales fight,” Roach said of the January 2006 fight won by Pacquiao via 10th-round technical knockout. Pacquiao had lost a decision to Morales in their first fight; Pacquiao knocked out Morales in the third round in their third fight.
“When he beat him, then the country really, really exploded and it was like they made him a national idol,” Roach said.
“Of course, now he is getting movie deals and sitcom deals and singing deals. Everything he does turns to gold over there and he’s so big over there, it’s just really amazing.”
So big, Roach said, that it affects even him.
“It trickles down to me also,” Roach said. “They treat me so well.
“I went to the mall one day and went to the movies and I got stuck for 2 1/2 hours taking pictures and signing autographs. I mean, you know, I’m just the trainer. They used to call me `Coach Freddie,’ but now they call me `Idol.’ And I say, `What do you mean idol?’ And they say, `You’re my idol.”‘
Roach, sitting on the apron of the ring at his Wild Card Gym last Wednesday, laughed.
“So, it’s really hard to come home from there,” he said. “I get treated so well.”
After coming back from the Philippines, Pacquiao trained for about two weeks at Wild Card, then moved on to Las Vegas, arriving there Tuesday.
Tireless approach
On this day, Pacquiao trained with passion. One of his assistant handlers had his stopwatch go out, so he never told Pacquiao that his three-minute round on the speed bag was over.
Pacquiao just kept going. He was tireless. He was scowling.
If this is a fighter whose mind has been elsewhere, he wasn’t showing it.
After he finished, Pacquiao sat in a narrow dressing room inside Wild Card. With members of his entourage sitting or standing quietly, Pacquiao spoke with a reporter about his supposed lack of focus, and what it has been like to watch his celebrity grow to these proportions.
For further perspective, Pacquiao’s second and third fights with Morales were at Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. There were obviously more Mexicans in the crowd for their second fight, but it seemed like the Filipinos evened things out for the rubber match. When Pacquiao stopped Morales in the third round in destructive fashion, the noise made by the Pacquiao faithful was deafening.
“Myself, I don’t want to think that I’m very popular right now,” said Pacquiao, speaking with complete humility. “I’m a simple person and I just want to live with my family and be happy and stay humble.”
But Pacquiao knows only too well that staying out of the limelight in the Philippines is impossible. Heck, he is extremely popular with the Filipino community here in Los Angeles, for that matter.
“Sometimes there’s a lot of fans coming to me and they want to take a picture, but I understand that because that is a part of my fame and that’s my life,” said Pacquiao, who said that when he is in the Philippines, he has to exercise caution.
“In the Philippines, I have a lot of bodyguards, especially in General Santos City (where he lives) because before I had a threat that somebody wanted to kidnap me and I don’t want to put my life in danger,” he said. “That’s why I hire a lot of bodyguards, especially for my family.”
It’s understandable, then, that there is a question as to whether Pacquiao has been able to retain concentration on his boxing career, what with everything that has been on his plate. But Pacquiao just kind of smirks when the subject is broached.
“We were very poor before I became a champion,” he said, recalling his younger days in the Philippines. “That’s why I’m continuing to focus on my boxing career, to help my family. My dream before, when I was young, was to help my family. Every fight that I have, I want to sacrifice myself.
“I have a big responsibility to the people who watch me fight. I want to make them happy, especially the Filipinos. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s why every training camp, every fight, I’m prepared 100 percent and training hard.”
Roach initially wanted Pacquiao to do his entire training camp at Wild Card. But Pacquiao said he had some personal issues he needed to be able to tend to in the Philippines, so they trained at a new outdoor covered gym in Cebu.
First, there was the Roach blowup. Pacquiao’s eyebrows raised when reminded of that.
“There were a lot of people who wanted to watch our training that first week,” Pacquiao said, “but Freddie decided he didn’t want to allow them into our training.”
By this time, Pacquiao is smiling. Minutes before, so was Roach.
Intensity impresses
He probably knows Pacquiao better than anyone when it comes to boxing, and to him there is no doubt that Pacquiao has his thoughts on one thing – the task at hand. His name is Marco Antonio Barrera.
“You know, I’m waiting for that day to happen where he loses his discipline and his work ethic and so forth,” Roach said.
“But, you know, as soon as we start training and we get in the boxing gym and get in the boxing mode and it’s time for a fight eight weeks out, I’ve never had a guy train harder or better and he’s still that way.
“And he drops everything else, except basketball. He likes to play basketball and he likes to run. So we have an agreement. I say, `OK, four weeks before the fight, no more basketball. So then four weeks is out and I read in the paper that he scored 31 points. So I went to the gym and I said, `Manny, you weren’t supposed to play basketball yesterday. The cutoff is now.’
“He says, `Coach, all I did was run up and down the court. I didn’t play.’ I said, `You scored 31 points.’ And he just smiled at me. So, he says, `OK, coach, that’s the last day.’ And it was his last day playing.”
Pacquiao owns a professional team in the Philippines. According to Roach, basketball is the most popular sport there. Even bigger than boxing.
“Yeah, yeah, maybe,” Roach said. “Not bigger than him, though.”
Time will tell
De La Hoya, like many, is curious to see if Pacquiao has too much going on to keep a mental grip on boxing. He said the first time Pacquiao and Barrera fought, it was Barrera who had distractions that included managerial problems and a hasty retreat down the hill from his Big Bear training camp when a forest fire erupted.
Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
“Has Manny been distracted, just like Barrera the first time around?” De La Hoya said. “You know, running for Congress in the Philippines and getting his own TV show. (He is) considered, obviously, by most more popular than the president (of the Philippines). And those can be distractions. Can Manny handle that?”
Arum said he knows Pacquiao can, and that nobody trains as hard for a fight as Pacquiao.
“When you are promoting a fighter, as a promoter you’d want the fighter to be like a monk, just to get in the training camp and just train for the fight and focus on the fight,” Arum said.
“Unfortunately, with a guy like Manny Pacquiao, that is not possible, just as it wasn’t possible for Oscar De La Hoya (who was formerly promoted by Arum). I remember we used to go crazy when he was making a record or rehearsing a song. That goes with the territory.
“The one thing I’m sure about, as I was sure about with Oscar, is that Manny has trained extremely hard for this fight.”
That much was obvious last week at Wild Card. At one point, Roach just watched in awe, with a sly smile on his face, as Pacquiao worked the speed bag with controlled abandon. Distracted?
Don’t think so.
