With internet rumors flying that he had been fired, Manny Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz has set the record straight for what seems like the fifth time in the last couple of years: No, he hasn’t been fired, and is still part of Team Pacquiao. From Rick Reeno:
“In my conversation with him, I asked ‘do I have a job?’ ‘[And he said] why do you ask me that?’ [And I said] because ‘it’s all over the internet that I was fired.’ And he said ‘it’s not true.’ Then we joked around a little bit…
… “It’s very simple, people try to put wedge between Manny and I, because I think they resent that Manny trusts someone not of his nationality as much as he trusts me, and secondly they know that I watch very tightly everything around Manny, although Manny knows most of everything, to make sure that people don’t take undue advantage of him. I think a lot of people resent that. It’s harder for people now to take advantage of Manny for their own benefit and I think a lot of people resent that.”
The “resent” part kind of reminds me of Bob Vance introducing himself as “Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration” to three different people all standing by one another.
Koncz has been criticized a lot, but honestly I’ve never seen anything particularly shady out of him that springs to mind right away. And I even think he might be a little bit right about some of the resentment he receives. (Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.) He was once socked by Alex Ariza, but Ariza also isn’t exactly a diehard fan favorite.
Still, Koncz kinda looks wormy and seems like he is, so that’s hard to change, and the reputation he has among some is long-established. To me, he’s just a part of Pacquiao’s inner circle, like Roach and Ariza and Buboy and some others. He must do something right to stay. If I concerned myself with every manager/promoter/adviser/whatever who might possibly be a dick, we wouldn’t even actually cover fights here.
