Coach Freddie Roach is talking about locking the gym doors certain sparring days as the Manny Pacquiao camp relocates from traffic clogged Manila to mountain air of Baguio.
Certainly Roach’s position and past record gives all the right in the world to make such an excutive decision. The Boston Leprechaun and his prize pupil are proably the most media and fan accessible trainer and fighter combination extant.
Roach and Megamanny are not just media friendly, they’re media cozy. Whether you’re from the Bumfog Gazette, Time magazine or Livershot.com, you’re more than welcome into Pacman’s training lair almost all of the time.
It would behoove Floyd Mayweather and other fighters and their respective trainers to take a media relations page out of Freddie/Manny book.
Anything goes down with Mayweather how do we find out?
Through the Las Vegas Metro Police Dpartment and/or celebrity disaster reporting TMZ.com, that’s how. Meanwhile, rapper 50 Cent is spewing viotriolic nonsene on Twitter about the mother of Floyd’s three children or how Floyd plans to KO Pacman.
News flash for Fitty: Floyd will have to sign a contract first.
I flash back to the time when Mayweather spurned Pinoy media at a public appearance in Los Angeles.
Imagine if Pacquiao rejected American media or African American media people at one of his workouts or appearances. The howling would never end.
Mayweather’s pr aides send out press releases only to ‘Friendly Freddies” whose coverage they like.
Typical of the openess of the Pacman camp is Manny’s painful but seemingly minor foot injury.
It might help Mayweather and his camp if they dropped the Kremlin clao of secrecy at least as far as their boxing activities. When Mayweather delayed the Juan Manuel Marquez fight claiming an injured rib, the wall of silence went up.
No particulars were given, no doctor’s name was mentioned. It was all hush, hush and stupidly so. The secrecy gave rise to suspicion that the injury was fake.
Pacquiao, on the other foot, stubs his left toe or whatever. He shows it to the media, perched at ringside and they report where he went to get it treated. Conditioning coach Alex Ariza addresses the issue as does Coach Roach. It’s no big deal, just another day at Manny’s office.
So let me ask you, if you were a boxing reporter, who would you prefer to cover? I thought so.
