By Mark Vester
According to a recent interview with the BBC, trainer Freddie Roach is very concerned that his fighter, Manny Pacquiao, is on the verge of walking away from the sport of boxing. Pacquiao faces Antonio Margarito for the vacant WBC junior middleweight crown on November 13 in Texas.
In the Philippines, Pacquiao represents the province of Sarangani after winning a seat in congress in May. Roach admits that Pacquiao approached him after a few days of training and said that he missed his political job. The veteran trainer expects Pacquiao to leave boxing for a career in politics.
"We are going to lose Manny Pacquiao to politics, for sure," Roach said. "After the first couple of days of training Manny came up to me and said 'I miss my job', and I said 'you're at your job', and he said 'no, I miss Congress'."
Roach is already noticing changes in the way Pacquiao operates in the gym. There are fears with the upcoming Margarito fight, because Pacquiao is not his usual self in camp. Pacquiao is getting better as the days go on, but his progress has been slower than usual.
"[We] haven't had the best training camp. I'm worried about the fight a little bit," said Roach. "We're fighting against a big, strong guy who's going to be in great shape and we're a little behind schedule which is very unusual.
"I'm not sure if it's the size of the sparring partners that's giving him trouble or he's just not himself yet. He's getting better and better every day but it's coming a lot slower than usual. Usually Manny has his first sparring session and could fight 12 rounds the next day, I can't say that at this point in the camp.
"But we do have two hard weeks of sparring coming up before we start tapering off and slowing down and saving it for the fight."
