LOS ANGELES ? Renowned boxing trainer Freddie Roach and his right-hand man Justine Fortune appear to be on collision course.
While the Wild Card Boxing Club guru has made no secret about his plan to come to San Antonio next week and call the shots for Manny Pacquiao when he battles Jorge Solis on April 14, Fortune is apparently against the idea since it would just spoil everything that they started.
Fortune told a handful of scribes from Manila that he can run the show with the help of Filipino training assistants Buboy Fernandez and Nonoy Neri.
“He can?t have both,” said Fortune after presiding over Pacquiao?s fast-phased workout, referring to Roach?s decision to hook up with De La Hoya for a hefty paycheck.
“Yeah, it could mess things up (if Roach comes to Texas),” said Fortune.
Roach is currently training Oscar De La Hoya for a May 5 super-fight and the bespectacled former fighter assured Pacquiao and member of his entourage that he will show up in Texas.
Reports have it that Roach will use a private plane to bring him to San Antonio from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where De La Hoya has been training for over a month now.
If he has his way, Fortune would like Roach to skip this fight and be back in the event Pacquiao prepares for a fight against a big-name opponent like Marco Antonio Barrera.
“It?s just Solis, (but) I mean I am not taking him lightly,” added Fortune, who is mainly a conditioning coach.
Roach told the website boxing confidential that he will definitely come to San Antonio and work Pacquiao?s corner and head back to Puerto Rico the following day.
Roach has never missed a Pacquiao fight since mid2001 although he was absent when Pacquiao fought Fabbrakob Rakkiatgym in Davao in Oct. 2002 and Serikzhan Yesmangbetov in Manila in 2003.
