Our telephone connection from Manhattan to Manila was not the strongest. On my end, Coach Freddie Roach sounded as though he was speaking into a Dixie cup with string attached to it.
But I did understand one thing that Manny Pacquiao's celebrated trainer said clearly.
Do not look for Roach, age 50, to jump into the heated fray, the war of words between Pacman strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza and longtime cutman-trainer Miguel Diaz.Diaz, originally from Argentina but a Las Vegan for about 40 years or so, and the much younger Ariza, who is originally from Colombia, got into verbal sparring right after the final bell sounded Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay.
Roach and Ariza were in the corner of main event winner Amir Khan while Diaz was chief second for his countryman, Marcos Maidana, who was rugged and gallant but who was outpointed by the Bolton, UK, resident.
Ariza said that Diaz made a derogatory remark about Maidana, calling him a piece of s--t.
[Diaz] starts coming over and calling me a fraud and a cheat and stuff like that. I don't know where it came from. So I just said, 'Hey, whatever, my fighter won, yours didn't.' Sometimes, you just don't know, you know?" said Ariza.
"It's kind of disappointing because you think, 'This is a sport, and it has nothing really to do with that,'" said Ariza. "But, you know, Miguel is ... sometimes when they get older, and you can see that you're on your way out. This is his last chance to make something. But to call me a fraud, you know, I don't cheat. Everybody knows that."
Diaz's story, as told to LV Examiner Chris Robinson and to both AOL Fan House's Elie Seckbach and Lem "Baltimore Gem" Satterfield, was that it was Ariza who started the verbal venom.
"Alex Ariza is the one who started the whole thing. I went to congratulate Freddie Roach, and from the back of everybody else, and, in front of Freddie, there were a lot of people. And Alex sticks his head out from out of everyone else and says, 'Your fighter is a piece of s**t,'" said Diaz.
"That's exactly what Alex Ariza told me," said Diaz. "And I said, 'You are a f**king fraud that's what you are.' But Alex is the one who started everything with me."
Roach is not keen on playing schoolyard monitor or referee between the two.
"I do not know what done and what was said between them," Roach said from his hotel in Makati.
"I do not know what was said or what was done. All I know is I told them they were both acting like like two little kids. And then I walked away."
Roach and Pacman promoter Bob Arum leave Manila Friday morning to go to General Santos City for Pacquiao's lavish 32nd birthday bash at the Convention center Friday.
Roach is known to have accepted if not recommended shopworn Sugar Shane Mosley as Manny's April 16 or May 7 opponent.
(mlcmarley@aol.com)
Source: examiner.com
No comments:
Post a Comment