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By Gareth A Davies
Boxing Correspondent
The Telegraph
11 Nov 2010
Freddie Roach, trainer to Manny Pacquiao, was incensed last night when a video, released on the internet, showed Pacquiao’s opponent this weekend Antonio Margarito, and cornerman Brandon Rios, apparently poking fun of Roach’s Parkinson’s Syndrome.
“We are going to make him eat his words,” said Roach.
The video will fuel the fight at Dallas Cowboys Stadium on Saturday night, when 70,000 are attending live.
The handshaking and mocking gestures were caught on video and have gone viral across the internet. In a video interview posted by Elie Seckbach of AOL FanHouse, Margarito can be seen twisting his face and raising a shaking hand to the camera.
Rios was also contorting his faces and stuttering the name of Pacquiao, the Filipino seven-weight world champion who has worked with Roach for nine years and is now considered the world’s No 1 pound for pound fighter.
Margarito’s trainer Robert Garcia also took part in the mockery by holding up a thick piece of metal, telling Roach had better watch closely as Margarito’s hands are wrapped so that it doesn’t end up under the tape.
Garcia has already apologised for the video. The ignominy is that Margarito was banned for a year after it was found that he had illegal hand wraps, with plaster of Paris found in the wraps.
Roach said last month that a boxer “having rocks” in wraps in his hands should not be allowed back into the ring and that it should be treated as “attempted murder”.
“This was nothing to do with the disease that Freddie Roach has. We know it’s something that we don’t wish on anybody,” Garcia said. “It’s something personal, something between Team Pacquiao and Team Margarito. I just wanted to make that clear.”
However, Roach has refused Garcia’s apology and has said he will ban Garcia from coming anywhere near his Wild Card Boxing Gym in Hollywood.
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