By Keith Idec
Teddy Atlas contends that his criticism of Freddie Roach during ESPN “Friday Night Fights” telecasts has been misconstrued as dislike for the International Boxing Hall of Fame trainer.
Roach himself said recently that Atlas “doesn’t like me very much.” The perceived adversarial relationship between the trainers is widely viewed as one of the few interesting things pertaining to the heavily scrutinized third welterweight title bout between Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) and Timothy Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs, 1 NC).
Atlas, however, has no intention of feeding into any of that drama and wants to focus solely on preparing Bradley for facing Pacquiao on April 9 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas (HBO Pay-Per-View).
“I have nothing against Freddie,” Atlas told BoxingScene.com. “For the last two decades my job has been – and I’m appreciative that I was given that job by ESPN and the fans – to sit at ringside, with a microphone, and break down fights. It’s just like training. Training has certain responsibilities and doing that has certain responsibilities. And part of my responsibility when I was doing that was when somebody was in the ring, in front of me, I had a responsibility not to be friends with them, not to be anything other than to tell what I thought was the truth about what was happening in that ring and connected with that event to the fans and to the public. That was my job. I was getting paid good money for that. And I took that responsibility very seriously.”
Atlas believes he treated Roach very fairly during ESPN telecasts.
“When Freddie Roach had a fighter fight on my air,” Atlas explained, “and I thought there were things that needed to be said that might’ve been positive, nice things, I said them. When I thought there were things that needed to be said, whether it was directly with him or a fighter he was handling, or whether it was me reporting on a Pacquiao fight, even though Pacquiao wasn’t on our air … when I had to state an opinion, I stated an opinion. There were times I stated an opinion that I’m sure Freddie found to be very positive and complimentary towards him, and deservedly so. And there were times I’m sure he found that weren’t. I don’t know if it was deservedly so.
“All I know is it was never motivated – ever – by anything other than me doing my job and stating my opinion. Not meaning I’m right, not meaning I’m wrong, but stating an opinion based on what information I had and based on my experience in 40 years in this business, and my judgment attached to that experience. And it was always based on that. And again, I know that there were times Freddie felt good about things that I said. But obviously, now, I know there were times that he didn’t feel good about what I said. But again, it was never motivated by me liking or not liking Freddie Roach. It was always motivated by me doing my job and respecting that job, and that’s it.”
Atlas added that while he doesn’t understand why Roach feels anything that was said was personal in nature, he stands by any analysis he has given regarding Roach and/or fighters he has trained.
“I’m not trying to stir anything up,” Atlas said. “I have nothing to apologize for. I have nothing to explain. I’m doing my job. … At the end of the day, I’m not going to be affected by whether or not Freddie understands it. All I can say is why I did it. It’s up to him to be able to address how he understands it or how he takes it, and how he deals with it. All I can do is say what I said. I didn’t care about how Freddie would feel about it. All I cared about was, ‘Am I saying what I believe to be the truth and what my job is to say?’ And that’s it.”
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.