- Image Credit: Reuters
- Freddie Roach-trained Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines trains during a media workout at Wild Card Boxing Club in Los Angeles last month as he prepares to defend his World Boxing Organisation welterweight title against Sugar Shane Mosley, which will take place on May 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Los Angeles: "I hope I can do this until the day I die," Freddie Roach says calmly as he explains the depth of his addiction to a dangerous business.
Boxing has consumed his life with a blurring combination of pride, fame and Parkinson's disease.
Words now tumble from him in a softly spoken slur which is a reminder of the damage done to such a warm and open man. Before he became the best trainer in the ring today, working with the greatest fighter on the planet in Manny Pacquiao, Roach used to be a boxer.
In focus: Manny Pacquiao
"Yeah," Roach says wryly, "I had five fights too many. I lost four of ‘em. I had the finest trainer there's ever been, Eddie Futch, and he knew I'd had enough. But I was 26 years old and still hard-headed so I couldn't see it. This is how it is. Boxing gets in your blood and you just can't quit."
Boxing, amid the squalor and heartbreak, is a drug. But it is difficult to think of Roach as one of its victims in a week when he goes to work again with the extraordinary Pacquiao who faces Shane Mosley in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Roach's serene training of Pacquiao has been complicated by the Filipino's astronomical fame both in the US and his home country. His popularity is such that Pacquiao is now a congressman in the Philippines. Before he fought Antonio Margarito, Pacquiao lamented in training that he missed congress.
Yet last week Pacquiao added another dimension to his preparations for the Mosley fight by releasing his first record an unashamedly schmaltzy cover of the already saccharine Sometimes When We Touch.
It's all part of the Pacquiao phenomenon, which outdoes Hollywood in the way his story moves from poverty in the Philippines which he left at 14 to start boxing in the hope he might earn enough money to help his mother and five siblings to global fame.
Pacquiao now earns many millions of dollars every year but he seems intent on giving most of his money away to his entourage and to strangers who affect him with their tales of deprivation.
"That's my biggest fear with Manny," Roach says while starting another day in his Wild Card gym, a seething hothouse in a rundown part of Los Angeles. "We talk about it all the time but I can't get it across to Manny. He's 32 and he can make his own decisions. But I keep telling him, and hoping, that he'll put away something for him and his family."
In Roach's small office a sign makes a surreal promise: Everyone Here Seems Normal Until You Get To Know Them.
Back from brink
The madness is contagious and offers an appropriate backdrop for Roach to remember how boxing almost ruined and then saved him. He once wanted to be either a tree surgeon, like his father, or a world champion. Instead, having become a damaged fighter nicknamed The Choir Boy, Roach found redemption as a cornerman.
"I worked with my dad and my major was in forestry. So I once knew a lot about trees. But my last job as a tree-man made me $300 (Dh1,101). It was enough to buy a ticket to Vegas and turn pro." Roach had a decent record, winning 40 of his 53 bouts. But he took too many punches for too little money. His biggest purse was $7,500 and, after boxing, he did some bum jobs.
"I was a busboy at the Golden Nugget, cleaning tables at the restaurant. I wasn't too good with people and so they made me a dishwasher. But I was worse in telesales selling ballpoint pens with a company name on them. Life's turned out sweeter since then."
The former fighter was approached by Mickey Rourke an actor with a chaotic dream of becoming a professional boxer. In exchange for training Rourke, Roach was given the money for his gym: "I opened up this place and then, a couple of years later, Manny Pacquiao walked through that door. That changed my life forever."
Roach's own health has suffered from Parkinson's. However, medication and a strong resolve have enabled him to keep working without a holiday for the past six years. "For the most part it's pretty stable, but small things pop up... Some nights I don't sleep much because I'm thinking about the fight. But [last Wednesday] I went 15 straight rounds with Manny on the pads and I felt good. I can still do it but it would be the end if I couldn't work with the mitts. I couldn't get close to my fighter, and give him the messages he needs, if I couldn't take his punches in my mitts."
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