BAGUIO CITY – “It’s under control. There’s nothing to worry about.”
This was how trainer Freddie Roach reacted to fears made by some sectors as to the extent of Manny Pacquiao’s leg injury suffered two weeks ago while jogging in a posh subdivision in Santa Rosa in Laguna.
“It might still be hurting, but I’m sure it’s not that serious as some people think,” Roach told this writer yesterday after the seven-division world boxing champion, again, cancelled his schedule roadwork.
It was at least the third time that that phase of his training in preparation for his November 13 World Boxing Council superwelterweight championship fight with Mexican Antonio Margarito had been put off since his team arrived here nine days ago.
Last Saturday, Pacquiao, likewise, cancelled his roadwork set at the city’s Burnham Park due to his aching left heel, but Roach attested his ward didn’t show any trace of the pain in the subsequent 14-round work with the mitts later that day when he also sparred with lanky Michael Medina for four rounds.
“Yesterday (Monday), I gave him 16 rounds with the mitts and we ended up as if nothing serious was going on,” the multi-awarded mentor assured, adding he will still give the reigning WBO welterweight titlist the benefit of the doubt by allowing him to play basketball, which many blame for the slow process of recuperation.
Since setting his foot here, Pacquiao and his team have been playing the game almost nightly after training.
The 1976 Montreal Olympics U.S. boxing team alternate bared that the problem started when the Pacman attended Congressional Session wearing a brand new leather shoes.
Pacquiao was elected congressman in the last election representing the lone district of his wife Jinkee’s home of Sarangani and has dividing his time attending sessions and training the past two weeks.
“I have been saying this time and again and I’m saying this again. We have a deal that he’ll stop playing basketball in the last month of our preparation and I expect him to respect that, as he had been doing the past several fights” he said.
“He really loves and is happy playing basketball as he loves boxing. If he’s happy, he gives me everything I ask him so that’s been our arrangement. He can play the game as long as he wants to, but when I say stop, he’ll have to stop, ‘” he said.
Roach said Pacquiao has already consulted a doctor, who prescribed massaging and applying ice on the injured leg every morning. He said he had no doubt that the injury will be completely healed in that four-month span.
“He’s not used to that kind of footwear so his heels somewhat swelled. It aggravated when he jogged for a few miles inside the subdivision his family residence is located,” he recalled.
Yesterday, Pacquiao himself proved the skeptics wrong when he arrived on the dot at his 2 p.m. workout at the Shape Up Gym inside the Cooyessan Hotel along Naguillian Road which he and his team call home in his scheduled four-week stay in this, the county’s summer capital.
He was supposed to work at least seven rounds against Medina and Glen Tapia whom Roach personally picked as sparring mates for reason that both fight like Margarito does.
Source: PhilBoxing.com
