ROACH WAITING FOR ANOTHER MANNY PACQUIAO TO WALK THROUGH HIS GYM DOOR
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 14 Apr 2016
LOS ANGELES, CA -- Had the then struggling Freddie Roach heeded his guru, the late Eddie Futch's advice not to put up a boxing gym, the now world famous Wild Card Boxing Club along Vine Street in the heart of Hollywood would not have been the cradle of world champions as it is today.
In 1992, when Roach was entertaining the idea of of constructing his own gym, Futch, the man considered as the greatest trainer of all time, told him to forget his plan and concentrate on just training boxers as owning a gym was a money-losing proposition.
Futch's long-time understudy, himself a former fighter nicknamed "La Cucaracha" and "The Choir Boy," persisted though and soon the gym was up.
"I went ahead and did the gym because I said to myself, you never know when the new Muhammad Ali is gong to walk through that door," Roach told this writer then, pointing to the Wild Card Gym.
True to his intuition, soon-to-be boxing hero Manny Pacquiao came into the door nine years after the gym was completed. And the rest was history.
Had Roach followed his teacher, he would not have been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of fame and accorded the "Trainer of the Year" seven times by the Boxing Writers Association of America.
The Filipino ring legend, too, would not have become the first and only man on this planet to crown himself world champion in eight divisions -- World Boxing Council flyweight, International Boing Federation super-bantamweight, Ring featherweight, WBC super-featherweight, WBC lightweight, International Boxing Organization/Ring junior welterweight, World Boxing Organization welterweight and WBC super-welterweight.
The now 37-year-old Congressman of Sarangani Province would not have been the toast of the prizefighting world by earning no less than 22 international awards and recognitions, including the BWAA Fighter of the Decade, and Fighter of the Year (three times), Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People (Heroes and Icons Category), Forbes magazine Celebrity 100 (The World's Most Powerful Celebrity,] Guinness World Records Most boxing world titles and onlh latel Asia Society's Asia Game Changer.
After Pacquiao beat Timothy Bradley black and blue and officially announced his retirement, rumors flew that Roach would follow suit prompting this reporter to seek the man for an interview to verify the report.
"No!" was his emphatic answer to the question. "Why should I do that? I would be doing nothing for the rest of my life. Boxing is my life and I will live and die in boxing."
"Besides, I told you once before, you never know when the next Manny Pacquiao is going to walk through that door," Roach said with his patented wide grin.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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