Pacquiao skips Training

By Dennis Principe For the first time in his latest Philippine training camp Filipino pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao skipped his workout and decided to take a day’s rest. According to famed trainer Freddie Roach, Pacquiao woke up Tuesday morning bothered by colds that also forced the multi-division world champion to miss out his morning road work. Roach learned about Pacquiao’s health status only after the famed trainer arrived at the Shape-Up Fitness Center in Baguio City just before lunchtime. The typically buoyant gym was unusually quiet the whole afternoon with only a handful of Pacquiao’s retinue inside the gym. Roach meantime ended up doing the mitts with Michael Medina, one of Pacquiao’s sparring partners then left the area after about two hours. Though Roach sounded less concerned about the situation, the hall-of-fame trainer said he will take it as a cue to prevent more people from entering the gym and watch Pacquiao while in training. Roach believes Pacquiao would be vulnerable to viruses if more and more people are allowed inside the gym. “We’ve had it before and the hardest part is keeping him in bed so he can recover a little quicker because he wants to work. He’ll make up for it. It’s really not a problem,” said Roach. On Wednesday Roach is expecting Pacquiao to return to the gym but the American trainer would like to gauge the Filipino’s readiness to go back to hard training. Roach has set Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday as Pacquiao’s sparring dates. Meantime Roach revealed that British prospect Amir Khan is on his way to the Philippines primarily to train under him and serve as a part-time sparring partner of Pacquiao. October 6th, 2010 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roach seems relax about the day off.