Freddie Roach
Freddie Roach
Frederick Steven "Freddie" Roachis an American boxing trainer and former boxer. He is the enduring boxing coach of the eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao, five-time and four-division World Champion Miguel Cotto, former WBC Middleweight Champion Julio César Chávez, Jr., former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre, as well as top prospects Jose Benavidez, Peter Quillin, and Vanes Martirosyan. Roach was the trainer of former two-time world champion and notable women's champion Lucia Rijker. He has also trained former junior welterweight champion...
ProfessionBoxer
Date of Birth5 March 1960
CityDedham, MA
(Marco Antonio) Barrera had beaten Morales, and Manny had beaten Barrera, and I just think Manny took him lightly, believing he was on the downside. But we miscalculated. We won't do that this time. Morales will still have the reach and height advantage, but Manny will have speed going for him. And he knows he has to win this fight.
Manny's Filipino audience loves to watch him, but I wanted it to be more private so we could better work on going to the body and the other things we need to work on. Velazquez is somebody we definitely can't take lightly. Everybody's talking about Morales and the rematch, but there won't be a rematch without winning this fight. We've been working on a little bit of everything to make Manny more of a complete fighter.
If we don't win this fight, it's just because we can't.
When we did make it public that we were not letting anyone watch any longer, the Filipino fans stopped coming. They respected the decision and knew it was for Manny's benefit. They helped us out and we respect that.
I thought it was something I could go to the sideline and shake it off.
Manny relied too much on connecting with that left hand of his (Pacquiao). He wanted a homerun.
You can celebrate birthday every year and fights like this (with Morales) comes once in a lifetime,
We're working on boxing and we're going to be smart about it. A basic 1-2 is not going to work. Manny knows that now.
We had too many distractions going into the Morales fight. Now a lot of the bad people are away from the scene and we have a good team, now.
We know Morales can take a punch, because Manny is a puncher and Morales took a lot of Manny's good stuff.
We are going to start training camp in the Philippines for two weeks then we will go back to the States for another six weeks.
It's good because it gets him back in the gym, back into the mode of training for a big fight. ... Get him out of the pool hall a little bit.
After this fight we'll take a week off and then we'll be straight back into Morales mode,
It was nice having them in the gym, but ... Manny was performing for them more than for me. I wanted him working on technique and so forth. ... They've respected it. They realize it's for his benefit and they want Manny to win.