World Boxing Cuncil founding secretary general Rudy Salud and Manny Pacquiao’s business manager Rod Nazario are joining forces to see to it that Filipino trainers and boxers get something from the visit of 2003 Trainer of the Year Freddie Roach.
Roach, who is credited with fine-tuning the skills of the Ring Magazine featherweight king and turning him into a skillful fighting machine, planed in early this week to supervise the training of Pacquiao.
In an interview with Viva Sports, Salud indicated that he and Nazario will organize a two-day session for trainers and boxers and “anybody who wishes to learn and benefit from Roach’s tremendous insights” at the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines gym at the Rizal Memorial stadium, tentatively scheduled next week.
Salud, however, made it clear that this must be considered “national undertaking for both amateurs and professionals, and therefore should be held at what is regarded as the headquarters of the national sports association for boxing.”
“It cannot be confined only to professionals at the Wild Card, L &M Gym, Elorde’s or the ALA Boxing Gym in Cebu City but should be open to all,” Salud stressed.
Salud and Nazario will finalize arrangements with Roach and try to fit the two morning sessions into his schedule so the renowned trainer could concentrate on working with Pacquiao in the afternoons. Roach had earlier indicated he was looking forward to meeting with Salud who had Roach train former WBC super flyweight champion Gerry Penalosa for his title fight against then champion Masanori Tokuyama in Japan.
Roach said “You actually have good trainers here,” even as he pointed out that “Manny (Pacquiao) was a good fighter when I got him. I just polished him up a little bit but the trainers are very capable here. They always got great fighters out of the Philippines and its going on.”
Roach indicated that one of the reasons for coming to the Philippines was to “see the talent they have here” revealing that he had heard a lot about WBO Asia Pacific bantamweight champion Rey Bautista whom Nazario wanted to bring to Roach’s Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles for a long time.” Roach said he planned to “take the most” of his visit and would work with Salud and Nazario “to see whether we can get more world champions out of here.”
Roach also expressed interest in visiting the ALA Boxing Gym of well-known Cebu boxing patron Tony Aldeguer so he could see Bautista, Cesar Amonsot, Rev Santillan, Rodel Mayol, Wyndel Janiola, Randy Suico and the roster of world-class fighters in the country’s hotbed of boxing as well as help in whatever possible way to improve the techniques of the large number of trainers in the Visayas and Mindanao.
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