The Unstompable roach

BOXING'S HOTTEST TRAINER—THE MAN IN MANNY PACpiAOS CORNER—IS ONE FIERCE HOMBRE. FREDDIE ROACH, WHO ONCE BIT OUT THE EYE OF A STREET THUG, KEEPS IT REAL AT HIS GRITTY GYM' IN HOLLYWOOD DESPITE DROP-INS FROM THE LIKES OF MARK WAHLRERG AND MICKEY ROURkE

.reddle Roach runs a skanky gym on a ratty block in Hol­lywood. The Wild Card Boxing Club shares a stucco low-rise with a laundromat and the local Alcoholicos Anon-imos. It used to be a strip joint. That was almost 20 years ago, when Mickey Rourke hired a punchy, broken-down ex-contender to turn the place into a gym and the actor into a boxer. Roach had to knock down a couple of stripper poles to make room for the ring where he trained Rourke, who ab­sorbed so many punches in eight pro fights that his face was

on its way to becoming the plastic-surgery poster it is today.

But he went undefeated. And before he quit boxing, Rourke

signed a picture of himself that still hangs in the gym, writ­

ing, "To the best goddamn trainer on the planet." vV

It wasn't true then, but it is now. '

These days Roach, 50, owns the gym. "It ain't pretty, but it's mine," he says. A scrawny, graying pug who could almost make the lightweight limit of 135 pounds, he sports a ragged goatee and a pair of Clark Kent specs known to boxing fans worldwide. In the

years since Rourke went back to acting, his old trainer has tutored 27 world champ­ions, including welterweight champ Manny Pacquiao, currently the best fighter in the world. Roach's cut of the purse for a proposed megabout between Pacquiao and Floyd May-weather Jr. looks to be between $2 million and $5 million, but Roach isn't talking. Not bad for a guy from the projects who grew up getting pummeled by his own family.

Roach came out of Dedham, Massa­chusetts, where his father, a small-time pro boxer, built a ring in the dirt behind the housing projects where they lived. Freddie's dad and big brother took turns knocking him around. He got no help from his mother, New England's first female boxing judge, who told him, "You'll never be much of a fighter."

"Tough household," he calls it. "She broke up one of our fights with an alumi­num baseball bat. Hit my brother over the head with it twee-clang, clang!"

He turned pro while still in his teens, a baby-faced lightweight promoters called the Choir Boy. In 1979 Choir Boy Roach moved to Las Vegas, where he lived in a trailer and bused tables at the Golden Nug­get while legendary trainer Eddie Futch schooled him in the ring. Roach went on to win 41 of 54 pro bouts, scrapping with light­weight champs Greg Haugen and Hector "Macho" Camacho. His loss to Camacho was the biggest payday of his career. "I got $13,000, but there was an IRS agent in the locker room who took my check as soon as I signed it. I'd been forgetting to pay taxes."

By 1981 he was 27-1 and ranked num­ber seven in the world. Matched against super-bantamweight contender Mario Chavez, with the winner to get a title shot, he broke his hand on Chavez's skull. Roach was never the same after that. He fought for five more years despite Futch's warn­ings that he was risking his future. "I was too bullheaded to listen," Roach says, "thinking with my fists. And what else was I gonna do, be a schoolteacher?" Not likely—in high school his response to strict teachers was "You wanna step outside?"

Thrashed in five of his last six fights, he took several hundred head shots that most likely caused the disease he fights today: pugilistic Parkinson's, the punch-drunk condition that afflicts Muhammad Ali and too many other ex-boxers. When Roach walks, his left foot drags. When he points at a boxer thumping a speed bag in the gym's dusty light, his hand shakes.

After finally retiring in 198G he cast about for something to do and found it. "I got drunk. Not punch-drunk, just drunk. For a year and a half. I was mad at the world."

You never want to fuck with Freddie Roach, but during that postretirement stretch when Mickey Rourke was his lone client,you really, reallydidn'twanttofuckwith him. One night three knife-wielding goons tried to mug him on Melrose Avenue. Roach dropped the biggest one with a left hook. The others were in the process of stomping him when he bit one of their eyes out. Spat a chunk of eyeball right out in the street. "I had eyelashes in my mouth," says Roach, who himself had four busted ribs, a dislocated shoulder, dislocated hip and gashes all over his head as he watched the goons run off. Once boxers heard the Choir Boy was in town, he landed a few more clients.

One new client was a celeb friend of Rourke's. "Marky Mark. He'd just gotten to Hollywood. Mark Wahlberg was a cocky kid-thought he had the world by the balls." Like Roach, Wahlberg had spent his forma­tive years as a street brawler in Boston. His idea of going Hollywood was decking Madonna's bodyguard. "The bodyguard gave him some lip, and Mark dropped him with one punch, a solid left," recalls Roach, who soon shifted from playing personal trainer for actors to training light heavy­weight Virgil Hill, his first world champ. Then, in 2001 Pacquiao rolled into the Wild Card Boxing Club with his six-man entou­rage and worked a couple of rounds with the proprietor, who caught flurries of Pac-quiao's blows with his punch mitts. Roach stepped out of the ring, saying, "That guy's strong and fucking fast." Pacquiao, who had been too quick to go all out in practice with other trainers, said pretty much the samethingin Filipino about Roach. He told his flunkies, "I've got a new trainer." Since then, with Roach in his corner, Pacquiao has demolished 18 opponents and won world titles in a record seven weight classes. His only rival (concluded on page 130)

GET INTO FIGHTING TRIM FAST

You II never throw a punch like Manny Pac-qulao, but at least you can try to match him crunch for crunch In your workout. Here's

[JUMP ROPE.

break, "fen minutes of jumping rope equals 30 minutes of jogging," Roach says. "The great thing about a jump rope Is you can take It anywhere. You can set a good workout in

(3) HEAVY BAG.

In between. "Shift your weight from right foot to left and back. Punch through the target, not at It. If you want to work like Pacqulao, skip the und rest."

Tenmln-' break. "The speed bag Is frustrating at first. Take your time-you'll get the hang of it." Four sets of

25. "When that seems easy, hold a 25-pound plate to your chest. Pacquiao does 1,000 sit-ups with weights twice a dav."

JMP ROPE.

best warm down you can do."

ROACH

(continued from page 88) for the title of best pound-for-pound fighter alive is the unbeaten Floyd Mayweather, who ducked a showdown early this year by claim­ing Pacquiao used performance-enhancing drugs. Mayweather demanded blood tests— unprecedented in pro boxing—knowing his superstitious foe would refuse. "lie was buy­ing time," says Roach. After tune-ups against lesser fighters, Pacquiao and Mayweather are expected to square off within the next year in the biggest, richest fight in history.

"Manny can win. lie will win," says Roach, who expects the megabout to go the distance. Both men art* brilliant technical boxers, not knockout artists. "But Mayweather's frag­ile," continues Roach. "He's had rotator cuff surgery. My plan is for Manny to break liim down, hit liim on that shoulder, bang, Ixing, bang, bang, bang." Roach may work on May-weather's mind, t. Three years ago, wliile training Oscar De La I Ioya for a bout against Mayweather, Roach was in the enemy locker room before the light, watching the champ get his hands taped. It's a tradition that goes back to the Dempsey days, when trainers cheated, hiding brass knuckles in their men's gloves or wrapping their hands in plaster of paris that hardened like a plaster cast. Now it's a formality. But when Roach saw Mayweather's trainer tape one of the champ's hands a hair above the knuckle, he called him on it. "You better do it over again." This irked May-weather's friend 50 Cent, who called Roach a few parental-advisory names.

"50 Cent," said Roach, "what the fuck do you know about boxing?"

Iixlay Roach is working liis usual 12-hour shift at Wild Card—eight in the morning till eight at night—answering the phone when he's not schooling one of liis fighters in the wood-framed ring he built himself. The walls are festooned with flags, inspirational sayings

(VOI" aiTIA 1IAVK BALLS TO CONQl F.R IIIF. WORII))

and fight photos showing liis champions in action: Pacquiao, I)e La Iloya, Hill, Mike Tyson, Bernard I Iopkins, James Toney, heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko, light welterweight Amir Klian, even the IIFC's Anderson Silva. "I don't mind working with MMA guys. They're fighters Ux>," he says. "But I wony about the future. There are a lot of 18-and 19-year-olds who think MMA's all there is."

lie nods toward a photo of Sylvester Stal­lone. I jke a lot of light folk, Roach hated the Rocky movies because of their telegraphed punches and clodhopping footwork. But he kept that to himself when a mutual friend, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, invited him to lunch with Stallone. They dined and smoked cigars in a hack room at the Cafle Roma in Beverly Hills, where Stallone and Schwarzenegger, wearing shorts and T-shirts, sounded offon pumping iron and pugilism. "I wasn't sure what to call Stallone. I said, 'Sly, how ya doing?' Sly fancies him­self a boxing expert, so mostly I listened."

The onetime Vegas buslx>y is now Holly­wood's trainer. Roach tutored Wahlberg and Christian Bale for the upcoming film Hie Mgliter. I Ie works with singer Aimee Mann and paper­weight True Blood actress Anna Paquin ("Don't laugh—she can move and punch," Roach says). And he has become sort of famous him­self. Thanks to Pacquiao and 2-1/7, the HBO reality show that documents their lives in and out of the ring, Roach is the third-inost-famous

person in the Philippines, after Pacquiao and the president. Often recognized in Vegas, L.A. and New York, he wishes fans would focus on liis friends instead. Friends such as his one-eyed sidekick Shane I.angford, an ex-boxer whose left eye was destroyed during liis final fight. I.angford was sleeping in the streets when Roach made him the janitor at Wild Card.

"Now I'm training guys," Langford says. "And thanks to 24/7 I got laid like three times!"

Roach says he's no longer mad at the world or even at the sport that made him rich while giving him the disease that slowly robs liim of the ability to speak without stuttering or move without trembling. "The worst tiling about Parkinson's is the ft," he says. "Peo­ple look at me dragging my heel like a cripple. I want to say, 'What the fuck are you lkin' at?'" One of his doctors says he won't get much worse; another says he will. Meanwhile his meds include Botox injections in his neck (to light muscle spasms) and multiple Parkin­son's drugs (side effects: drooling and possible addictive behavior). But Roach refuses to sweat the prognosis. He plans to train liis fighters until the disease kills him or makes him quit working, which amounts to the same thing.

And there's something weird about his Parkinson's. When he's in the ring it disap­pears. The shuddering, foot-dragging Roach steps through the ropes and becomes the world's quickest 50-year-old. Hisdraggy foot straightens up. He bobs and weaves, blocking Pacquiao's lightning jabs with lightning hands. His doctors can't explain it—it's a mysteiy, like the odd fact that actors don't sneeze onstage— and Roach doesn't question the mysteiy lie just inhabits it. The other day he worked 70 rounds without a break, looking as quick and fit as the Choir Boy Roach of 1979. Then he left the ring, and liis ft began to drag. He answered the phone with a shivering hand.

"Hello? Who? What's his record? Sure, I'll talk to him."

He gets calls eveiy day from lx>xei s' agents, backers, mothers, brothers or girlfriends, all dreaming that the four-time trainer of the year might add their man to his stable. Sometimes a boxer himself will work up the courage to phone Roach, who says yes to one in 100. There's no time to take on more than that, not with 24/7 camera crews trailing him, reporters calling Wild Card for Roach quotes, fans stopping by for autographs, Pacquiao flying him to the Philippines for workouts. With the Pacquiao-Mayweather blockbuster coming up, promising to make him richer and more famous than ever, the old Choir Boy is on top of the planet.

Is he happy? "I don't know. I used to be happier," he says, shouting to be heard over the voices, punches and radio music filling the gym. "You know when? When I was 19, in Vegas, in my prime. Twenty-seven and one, voted prospect of the year. Living in a trailer park. Working with Kddie Futch all day, sparring with Alexis Arguello, helping Ray 'Boom-B<x)in' Mancini get ready for a title fight. No distractions."

No Parkinson's either.

"Yeah, but that's not why it was the best time of my life. The why of it is...I was still a fighter."