TOP TRAINER Freddie Roach will be in the corner of Manny Pacquiao when the Filipino boxing icon battles Mexican Jorge Solis on April 14 in San Antonio, Texas.
“Freddie asked me about getting a private plane for him,” Billy Keane, a confidant of Roach, told the Bulletin yesterday from Los Angeles.
Roach is currently training Oscar De La Hoya in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Hall of Fame cornerman has apparently gotten the permission of De La Hoya to skip one day of training so he could call the shots for Pacquiao when he faces the unbeaten Mexican at the Alamodome.
Even Pacquiao confirmed that Roach is indeed going to San Antonio.
“He’ll be in my corner,” Pacquiao said in an interview yesterday moments after he logged 12 rounds of sparring at the Wild Card Boxing Club.
“We talked yesterday (Friday) about it and he’ll be in San Antonio,” said Pacquiao, whose sparring sessions will be reduced to “eight rounds on Tuesday, six on Thursday and four on Saturday.”
In the event Roach shows up in Texas, it’s going to be for the sole purpose of giving instructions since he will immediately head back to De La Hoya’s camp to resume training for De La Hoya’s all-important May 5 clash with Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas.
With Roach exclusively training De La Hoya beginning in early-March, the GenSan fighter was left to the care of Roach’s righthand man, Australian conditioning coach Justin Fortune.
Meanwhile, Pacquiao will go on a commercial flight instead of a private jet when he flies to San Antonio on April 8.
“The original plan was for us to take a private jet (that was going to be provided by Top Rank) but Manny wants to fly (on an afternoon) commercial (flight),” said Mike Koncz, the Filipino lefty’s Canadian adviser, who will be joined in the same flight by training assistants Nonoy Neri and Buboy Fernandez.
On the night of April 9, Pacquiao will watch Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker and the rest of the San Antonio Spurs, who are hosting the Portland TrailBlazers at the AT&T Center.
Top Rank, which is promoting the Pacquiao-Solis headliner that also features Jorge Arce, Brian Viloria and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., is keen on staging the show before a sellout at the Alamodome and an appearance by Pacquiao there should jack up not only ticket sales but the pay-per-view as well.
Lester Bedford, the site coordinator for the fight, said almost all the floor seats have been purchased. Bedford was also tapped by Golden Boy Promotions when Pacquiao fought Marco Antonio Barrera in late 2003.
