Heartache and guilt driving the man who made Pacquiao
Freddie Roach and his marquee fighter are like father and son, but the relationship with his own mum needs healing...
FREDDIE ROACH intercepts the old lady as she makes her way across the parking lot behind the Wild Card Gym and gives her a hug. ‘This is my ma,’ says Freddie. The old lady nods a greeting and walks over to her car. She gets in and drives off, edging out on to Vine Street and heading north towards Hollywood Boulevard.
‘She still drives to Vegas by herself now and then,’ says Freddie. Not telling the rest of it. Not yet. Not talking about the guilt that used to eat him up. Not talking about the father he used to favour or voicing the regrets about the children he has never had or speaking of the sons he has made of the fighters he has turned into champions.
Freddie pushes open the door to the downstairs gym and walks in. This is the place he built for Manny Pacquiao a few years back so his biggest star could prepare for fights away from prying eyes. Pacquiao is due to arrive later. For now, the room is deserted. The frenzied beat of fighters working the speed balls and pounding the heavy bags rolls down through the ceiling in a busy, thudding hum.
A boxing ring dominates the room. Freddie sits on the ring apron. Now and again, the best fight trainer in the world lolls back against the ropes. He looks well, much improved from a couple of years back. He is on some new medication for his Parkinson’s disease. His tremors have diminished. His face looks clearer and less strained. ‘My mother asked me two days ago, “What are you doing to your face?”,’ says Freddie. ‘I told her, “Nothing”. She said “Bull****”.’
Freddie starts to talk about the fight, ght, the biggest fight he has ever been involved in, The Fight of the Century, the richest fight in history, Pacquiao v Floyd Mayweather Jr a week on Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. He says where he thinks the fight will be won and lost. He says it represents a struggle between the good and the bad in boxing. He paints a picture of Pacquiao as a decent, honourable, generous s man.
But most of all, Freddie talks about the bond that has formed between him and Pacquiao and the code that exists between trainer and fighter, between a teacher and the man he schools in fighting, the relationship that lies at the heart of boxing. Muhammad Ali had Angelo Dundee, Mike Tyson had Cus D’Amato, Pacquiao has Freddie.
THEY have been together 15 years now, this former lightweight who fought on too long and the Filipino he shaped into one of boxing’s great champions but theirs is not a one-sided partnership. The wisdom does not just flow one way. Freddie tries to make Pacquiao a better fighter. Pacquiao has a different aim. ‘Manny sometimes wants to make me a better person,’ says Freddie.
Freddie points over to a pad of paper on the wall and chuckles about how Pacquiao objects to him swearing. There is a tally written on the pad of how much he owes Pacquiao for every time he has cursed. The deal is $5 for every swear word. Freddie racked up $115 on the first day of camp. ‘I’m a little rougher than Manny is and so forth,’ says Freddie.
It was Pacquiao who encouraged a reconciliation between Roach and his assistant Justin Fortune with whom he had fallen out. ‘I hated Justin for a long time and he hated me for a long time,’ says Freddie. ‘But Manny said, “Freddie, you know, it’s a lot easier to be friendly with someone than to be against each other”.’ And when Pacquiao and Mayweather met at a joint Press conferencef to publicisebli i theh fightfi h several l weeks ago, Pacquiao urged Roach to be civil. ‘So I said, “Good luck Mayweather but we’re going to knock you out anyway”,’ says Freddie. ‘Manny had told me to be nice and I said, “Manny, that’s as nice as I can be”.’
That is not entirely true. Roach, voted Trainer of the Year six times by the Boxing Writers’ Association of America, is one of the best guys in the fight game, approachable, open, kind-hearted, self-deprecating. It is just that he is still struggling to get used to the idea that he is not the way he used to be. In his own mind, he is still paying for the way he acted as a young man when he was his father’s son. He still does not tell the rest of it. Not yet.
It is clear how much the relationship between him and Pacquiao means to both men. It is clear that they have established the kind of mutual trust that does not exist too often in sport. Freddie points over to another corner of the room, this time to the door of his office where a picture of him as a lightweight fighter stares out at the gym.
‘Manny asked me to come into that office a few weeks ago,’ says Freddie. ‘He said, “Let’s negotiate”. I said, “I need to call my lawyer”. He said, “No, you and me can do it”. I said, “OK”. He said, “How much do you want?”. I said, “How much do you want to give me?” He gave me a figure and I shook his hand and said, “Thank you”.
‘It’s outrageous what I’m making for this fight. I never saw that much money in my life. I don’t really know what to do with it either. I won’t blow it. I will save i it. I’ It’s a l lot of money and he is one of the most generous people I have ever met. We have been together 15 years now. I mean, that just doesn’t happen. Marriages don’t last that long. For me and him to be together still and to have that respect for each other is kind of amazing.’
LONG after his own trainer, Eddie Futch, had begged him to retire, Roach fought on, losing five of his last six fights and sustaining neurological damage before he finally quit in 1986. Now that he has money, he has paid for his house and his car in cash. He does not want to have to make payments. He needs to know his possessions cannot be taken away from him. ‘I lived in an apartment here at the gym for 10 years,’ he says. ‘I’m cheap because I don’t want to be broke. I see so many fighters who are broke. My first payday with Virgil Hill, I blew all that money and I said, “That will never happen again”.’
He thinks about what he blew it on. ‘Nothing,’ he says. Easy living? He smiles. ‘Being friendly.’
Freddie split with his girlfriend of three years, Maya, a doctor, before the build-up to the Mayweather fight began. It was a familiar story. ‘I am 55 years old,’ says Freddie. ‘I have had a lot of girlfriends and I have had a lot of girls leave because I always choose boxing
over th them. They are always second to boxing and that is just the way it goes. Maya handled it pretty well. She didn’t come to my fights. I didn’t go to her hospital. I have had a lot of opportunities to have kids with some really, really nice people and it would have been great but it has just never happened. I have always been too busy to do it. I regret sometimes I never had kids. Why shouldsh I have a kid now? I am 55 years old.ol I couldn’t even play with it. I just thinkth it’s maybe too late.
‘I‘ guess the fighters that I train, they arear more than just fighters to me. They haveha to have respect. They have to say theth right thing. Don’t do this, don’t do that.th They are my friends. They are my children.h
‘Before this training camp, I was out in the Philippines at Manny’s house and he was playing basketball at the court he has. Some guy came up and said, “Do you think you’re a father figure to him?” I said, “Well, I think, maybe friends, brothers, we care for each other”. He says, “How come every time he scores a basket, he looks at you?” I looked then and every time he scored, he looked at me. He does like my approval. And I thought, “I guess maybe I am still a father figure for him”.’
AND so Freddie is a father to all these sons. As he teaches them respect, as he tries to tell them how to behave, as he helps them out financially with small loans here and there if they have had a rough week. Amid all that, he starts telling the rest of it: he is only just learning to be a son to his own mother.
‘When I was a fighter, I was a whole different person,’ says Freddie. ‘If you talk to my mother, she will tell you some stories. I was one of the meanest kids you ever met. My dad was a physical guy. He beat everybody up, including my mother. I used to make fun of her a little bit when my dad had beaten her. That’s why I take care of her, because I feel bad about that. She would come down with two black eyes and I would laugh at her.
“I’m glad somebody thinks it’s funny”, she’d say. I shouldn’t have done that. The thing is that for some reason, I liked him more than I liked her when I was a child.
‘He was a mean guy. I don’t know why I liked him. As soon as my youngest brother graduated high school, my mum left him. He died in 1992. I cried for a minute and then I said, “You know what, he’s better off dead”. I left it at that.
‘He gave up on life. He didn’t want to live any more. He went from being the mean guy to being this guy who didn’t care any more, I liked him better when he was mean. At least he had spirit even if it wasn’t channelled the best way.
‘I’m trying to make it up to her now. I buy her cars and whatever she wants. She wants a new Mini right now, which is a little bit of a pain in the ass. She wants a black Mini. She gets what she wants and we have a good relationship now. She’s 77. She beat cancer twice. She’s a tough lady.’
And so now, Freddie lives a couple of miles from the gym in a duplex and his mother lives next door. Every evening he stops in to say goodnight because he knows it reassures her. Every morning, she arrives at the gym at 7am to check everything is all right and sits on the stool behind the reception desk.
From there, she can gaze out at the gym and at Manny Pacquiao and at the other fighters who yearn to be champions. And she sees her son and all his sons.