LOS ANGELES - The Wild Card Gym is a good place to either get in shape or win a world boxing championship. It's a better place to hide.
It's one block south of Hollywood & Vine, but it's only a couple of doors removed from a nail shop. You go to the back of a mini-mall, and you walk up an outdoor staircase. You know you're there when you hear seven heavy bags yelping, when you hear maybe a dozen light bags thumping, when you hear the tap-tap-tap of jump ropes, like raindrops.
The walls are covered with old fight posters, many of them involving Freddie Roach, the proprietor. One sign says: "People Here Are Normal Until You Get To Know Them."
The essential sign is a simple one, and it greets everyone who walks into the sparring ring. It says simply: "It Ain't Easy."
And Roach ain't just the guy who shows up on Fight Night and points Manny Pacquiao in the direction of his prey.
He also trains Amir Khan, the great British hope from the 2004 Olympics, and he trains undefeated Vanes Martirosyan. He has trained Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, Virgil Hill, Bernard Hopkins, Shaquille O'Neal, Mickey Rourke, even some MMA guys.
He has trained 25 boxing champions, and on this particular morning he is the ring, wearing catching gloves, with Lateef Kayode, an impossibly sculpted Nigerian who is 9-0 as a cruiserweight with eight knockouts.
Roach lounges on the ropes and tells Kayode how to finish the job. Don't stand straight up and be mechanical. Stay in "the pocket." Move your head to the side, dip your shoulder, get leverage. He grinned and Kayode grinned, and Roach tapped his fighter on the head.
"He's got a tendency to stay up high and just slap his body shots," Roach said, blinking through his glasses. "He's got to move his shoulder and give the power shots to the body. But he's a very good prospect. He wants to learn really bad.
"This is why I do this. If I can help a guy become a better fighter, it makes me happy."
Roach is almost 50 now, and he puts in endless days, and he watches tape, and he is squeezing everything out of a life that teeters a bit.
He has Parkinson's disease, a byproduct of too many head shots in a career that pitted him against Hector Camacho, Bobby Chacon and Greg Haugen. Somehow the trembles go away when Roach is in the ring, even when he talks boxing.
How do you love something that insists on such an irrevocable price? Maybe it's in the steps Kayode will take between 9-0 and 29-0.
Roach has been with Pacquiao nine years and has taken him from 120 pounds to 147. In the process Pacquiao has become a worldwide idol and the most respected pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
His magnum opus was supposed to come against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. on March 13, but that fight died when Mayweather insisted on Olympic-style drug testing, the kind Mayweather and Shane Mosley will take before their fight on May 1.
Pac-Man now prepares for Joshua Clottey in Arlington, Texas. Roach hasn't given up on Mayweather.
"Will they fight? I think they will. I really do," he said. "It will happen in June or July or somewhere down the line."
Of course, that presupposes Mayweather will beat Mosley.
"I don't think that fight will happen," Roach said. "Floyd's never wanted to fight him."
It's quite a triangle, when you think about it. Remember Ali/Frazier/Foreman? Or Robinson/Basilio/Fullmer?
"Floyd is the best defensive fighter of our era," Roach said. "If you just walk into him like Ricky Hatton did you get knocked out by a counterpunch. He sets traps. He walked Oscar into some shots when Oscar got too aggressive. He gets behind, but he likes to gain momentum during a fight. He's smarter than he's given credit for.
"Shane's a better puncher and a very good boxer. But you can get him to exchange with you, a little bit more. If you do that you can maybe finish him, too, even though he wants to finish you. With Manny, that's three really good fighters. They're alike but they do things a little differently."
Whatever happens, Roach knows Pacquiao has the power. The hang-up with Mayweather was he wanted to set the agenda.
"You let him get away with that, it's like giving him the first two rounds of the fight," he said.
With that Pacquiao arrived, long after the rest had left — the undercard pros, and the amateurs who want to be pros, and the businessmen who want to make their shirts bulge. This would be just the tip of Freddie's day. The iceberg is full of guys like Lateef Kayode.
mwhicker@ocregister.com
Source: ocregister.com
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