The ghost of Manny Pacquiao haunts the Wild Card Gym -- Telegraph

By Gareth A Davies, Telegraph.co.uk

It is like a scene from Waiting For Godot. Or No One Writes To The Colonel. The action is in limbo. The movement in suspense. The foot sloggers go through their paces at Freddie Roach’s boxing gym on a drizzly Vine St, in Hollywood. Pounding, but with no purpose. It is the ghost of Manny ‘Pacman’ Pacquiao which haunts the quad of the Wild Card Gym, scene of the eponymous Filipino Congressman for Sarangani.

When Roach and Pacquiao are away, as they have been for five weeks until today, Monday October 25, the gym is busy, but there is no purpose to proceedings. I thought I was unfortunate to turn up there last week,

It makes you acutely aware of how we, or better still, boxing, will miss the Roach-Pacquiao double act, when they are gone for good. Pacquiao will be first, into the mire of politics. For five weeks, the place is like a shell, overseen by Roach’s brother, Pepe. Roach is the enforcer, and on Monday, he had his mood on pressing matters. Namely on drilling Pacquiao. Earlier, he worked with the young British 140lb world champion Amir Khan.

Khan works tirelessly, building his fitness. Alex Ariza, head of strength and conditioning, looks on approvingly. Khan really goes for it at the end of his session. He winks at a few friends around the ring apron. After two years at this gym, he now feels at home.

Khan also told The Telegraph that “being around Freddie and Manny” is the “best feeling in the world, and the best place I could possibly be.” No wonder Roach and Ariza talk of him in glowing terms at present. Last week, in The Philippines training camp of Pacquiao, Khan sparred twelve rounds with the seven-weight world champion. And looked good doing so, by all accounts.

Pacquiao has arrived a little late after 3pm. A black Mercedes C500 pulls up and into the quad behind the Wild Card Gym. HBO’s 24/7 ubiquitous film crew are there, hard-working, good-humoured, boots on, always up for it. Peter Nelson takes photos, as we await his biography on Freddie Roach. It should be a good one. Roach is one of the pivotal figures in modern boxing, and, with Pacquiao and Khan, a foot in each camp of the two main rival boxing promoters in the United States. Golden Boy with Khan; Top Rank with Pacquiao.

Among the group of Filipino reporters, is television news host and in situ reporter Chino Trinidad. Humorous, engaging, and the best in the business in television sports reporting from The Philippines – his father Recah Trinidad is sports writer and has already written ‘Pacific Storm’, a book on Pacquiao – Chino believes he has seen a change in his subject in recent months.

Remember what Pacquiao has become in The Philippines. Think the roots of Maradona. Take away the cocaine binges. Think Ali. Think one people, rather than the world. Think Lionel Messi, then add a politicians desire with the cultured beauty of the young man’s left foot (Pacquiao is a lefty, too, by the way). Sprinkle in the relaxed poise in the public spotlight of David Beckham, then finally add the hysteria that was once held for the Lady Diana Spencer.

Trinidad has covered Pacquiao for 15 years. “I’ve covered him from his second fight when he turned pro,” Chino told me Monday as we (well, I) scoffed the scrumptious orange chicken at Nat’s Thai Food, within the quad at the Wild Card. Next door is a (rudimentary) Pacquiao Merchandise Shop. If you want a t-shirt with Pacquiao Bruce Lee-esque torso, they are there. You get the picture.

“I covered Blow By Blow, a boxing show Manny was on. It is where I met Manny. It came natural to me to commentate on boxing. My grandfather trained two boxers, my father is a journalist. I really haven’t seen a great change in the way this guy Pacquiao is. You get the image of the man from the camp, from the people around him. What Pacquiao says is the same banana as what he said to me 10 years ago.” Trinidad likes that.

But there is something new. A cause de politique. “I can see the embers in his eyes, at times, now, I think,” he muses. “Perhaps politics changes you. When Manny first wanted to get into politics, I voiced against it. Does he really need to do this ? My view was that he served the country better as a fighter, when, three times a year, he keeps us together, he unites a nation. I wear a Filipino t-shirt with pride, and a lot of that is down to what Manny Pacquiao has achieved. Filipinos now want to be identified as exactly that. Not as a nation of domestic cleaners.”

“He showed us that we can be redeemed, how we can make something of ourselves, a symbol of how you can arise to greatness from poverty. I was a sceptic about his politics. I just saw him as a modern-day hero.” We talk on, we talk of a shared interest in a man, a sportsman, a fighter, who fascinates us both.

Then Trinidad leans in. I remember once, he said this to me, and it made me realise I was wrong. “When I fight,” Pacquiao had told Trinidad, “ I make them [the people] happy for Sunday, then proud on Monday, and then by Tuesday, we all go back to our miserable ways. I want to eradicate that so that people are not thinking about where their next meal is coming from.” It resonated for Trinidad. It may well have already resonated with Pacquiao in Congress. And it may resonate soon for the boxing world. Perhaps we had better ready ourselves sooner rather than later for Pacquiao to haunt the Wild Card Gym – for a long time to come.

Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk