WASHINGTON, DC.--Michael Marley reporting from the historic Hay-Adams Hotel “where nothing is overlooked but the White House” and they mean that literally...
They may say that Washington (George) Slept Here but now the famed hotel a hop, skip and jump away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can also say “Pacquiao Slept Here.”
Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquiao's beloved from Boston to Bacolod trainer, turns age 51 come March 5.
Despite his bout with Parkinsonism, Roach looks healthy and stays in fighting trim.
On a Valentine's Day when sweet love was in the air, even in boxing circles, Coach Roach and I spoke about death.
Not that either of us are in a rush to meet the Grim Reaper or anything like that but my fellow Bostonian has already figured out where he wants to finally drop his battle sword.
Roach wants to “check out” not in a hotel, not on an airplane and not on Malibu Beach. Other places he is not planning to expire are any fancy golf courses or any fishing holes.
Roach despises wakes, funerals and the usual trappings of mourning a loved one in a formal way.
But, in thinking about his own physical demise, he knows where he wants to take the ultimate 10 count.
“People ask me about retirement, I will never retire from doing what I love,” Roach told me in New York after the Sugar Shane Mosley-Pacquiao presser at Chelsea Piers.
“What would I do other than this? What could I do? I hate golf, I hate fishing. As far as I'm concerned, can just drop in the gym and that will be enough.”
I asked ex-fighter Freddie how he rated the movie, “The Fighter,” based on Lowell, Mass., product Irish Micky Ward.
Roach is a movie buff who watches flicks every Sunday night.
“I liked it, it was good,” Roach said. “But I know a lot about Micky and about his family.
“I'll tell you a funny story, my mother (Barbara, first women boxing judge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) scored the Dickie Eklund-Sugar Ray Leonard fight and she gave it to Leonard in Boston.
“One of Micky's crazy sisters went looking for her. She was intending to beat my mother up,” Roach said.
“My mother saw the sister coming after and she did something smart. She looked around ringside and she spotted a priest she knew.
“My Mom went over there, sat with the priest and that was the end of that.”
When Freddie's end comes, he won't mind a bit if it occurs with his boots on at his own Wild Card Gym or another fistic factory.
Some people live to work and some work to live.
Mark down Coach Freddie as a guy who wouldn't complain about dying at “the office.”
Source: Examiner.com
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