FREDDIE ROACH won?t touch the durian even with a ten-foot pole.
Two weeks into his tour of duty in the Philippines, his first in this side of the pond, Roach, the renowned boxing trainer, has fallen sick twice not because of the notorious fruit but “probably because of the water” and “has lost R5,000 in the cockfights.”
“Yeah, I lost about $100 but it was fun, though,” said Roach yesterday as his ward, boxing star Manny Pacquiao was getting dressed for a two-and-a-half-hour workout at the Wild Card Boxing Club on Presidents Ave. in Para?aque.
“I tasted the durian once and I took one bite and gave it away,” said Roach, who owns the original Wild Card Boxing Club located on Vine St. in Hollywood, California.
Roach arrived in Manila two weeks ago to help prepare Pacquiao for Saturday night?s 12-round tuneup bout with Fahsan 3K Battery of Thailand in an open-air arena at The Fort in Taguig.
Before getting down to business, Roach spoke with a handful of scribes and sounded delighted about the things “he?d been doing the last two weeks.”
“Basically, it?s shopping and hanging around with Manny after the training,” said Roach, who assumed the huge responsibility of training the 25-year-old GenSan lefty in mid-2001.
“This has been one of the longest I have stayed outside the US and I am enjoying every bit of it.”
Tomorrow and Thursday, Roach is set to hold a morning-only boxing clinic at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.
Sportsman Rudy Salud, the man who wrote the bylaws of the World Boxing Council in the 1960s, is putting up the event in partnership with the Philippine Sportswriters Association headed by its president, Jimmy Cantor of Malaya.
Confirming their attendance are two of Cebu?s leading fight figures, Tony Aldeguer and Wakee Salud and North Cotabato Gov. Manny Pi?ol.
Roach was voted by the Boxing Writers Association of America as its Trainer of the Year awardee for 2003.
Apart from Pacquiao, Roach also trained ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson, James Toney, Hawaii-born flyweight Brian Viloria and reigning International Boxing Federation superbantamweight king and many-time Pacquiao sparmate, Israel Vasquez.
