America At Large: There are five weeks remaining in the calendar year, and the Boxing Writers Association of America will convene in New York two weeks from Saturday to consider nominations for its annual awards, writes George Kimball.
Since I'm otherwise committed for the day of that meeting, I telephoned the BWAA president, Bernard Fernandez, yesterday just to make sure the name of Freddie Roach was entered in nomination as Trainer of the Year for 2003.
Bernard agreed that Steve Collins's former trainer would not only be a deserving nominee this year, but that he should probably be considered an odds-on favourite.
"Nobody else came close to what Freddie did this year," said Fernandez.
Consider the accomplishments of the 43-year-old ex-pug over the past 11 months: Roach took over the corner of Mike Tyson and trained boxing's bad boy for his February KO of Clifford Etienne at the Pyramid in Memphis.
Freddie was the architect for boxing's most amazing reclamation project of 2003: James Toney, widely believed to be a decade removed from his best fighting days, upset the previously unbeaten Vassily Jirov to win the International Boxing Federation cruiserweight title in April, and then, in October, Toney moved up to heavyweight and annihilated four-time world champion Evander Holyfield.
Last Saturday night, in San Antonio, another Roach pupil, Filipino featherweight Manny Pacquiao, scored another monumental upset when he demolished the great Marco Antonio Barrera. Barrera had in recent years bested the likes of Naseem Hamed, Erik Morales and Johnny Tapia, but Pacquiao handed out such a beating that Barrera's brother Jorge left the corner and implored referee Laurence Cole to stop the fight in the 11th round.
Pacquiao-Barrera was apparently a labour of love for Roach. Barrera's purse last Saturday night was a million dollars, Pacquiao's barely a third of that, so the trainer's end won't come to much. But Freddie, who's still waiting to be paid for Tyson-Etienne, isn't always in it for the money.
I've known Freddie Roach since he and his brothers, Joey and Pepper, were collecting Silver Mittens and Golden Gloves trophies in their Massachusetts schoolboy days. Although Freddie would win the New England featherweight title, for most of his professional career he was based in Las Vegas, where he fought under the tutelage of the late, legendary Eddie Futch.
Late in Roach's career, Futch realised Freddie had gone as far as he was going to go and had only an accumulation of punches to look forward to. He advised Roach to retire and join him as an assistant trainer. Freddie insisted on plodding on, and lost seven of his last 11 fights (with the victors including world champions Hector Camacho, Greg Haugen and Bobby Chacon) before belatedly packing it in.
The final loss came in 1986 at the Lowell Auditorium, where he dropped a decision to a New England youngster named Dave Rivello. Ironically, the main event that night showcased an up-and-coming Irish middleweight named Steve Collins, who knocked out Julio Mercado in three rounds.
Roach joined Futch, and was responsible for most of the hands-on training for Virgil Hill when the 1984 Olympian bested Leslie Stewart to win the world light-heavyweight title in 1987. He also became the co-trainer, with Futch, of welterweight champion Marlon Starling.
One afternoon, when Starling was in camp at a Catskills resort in Stevensville, New York, Roach joined me on the facility's golf course. I recall posting a report of that day, noting that Freddie shot a remarkable 73. "Unfortunately," the account continued, "Roach then encountered some difficulty and didn't score as well on the back nine."
Freddie eventually relocated in Los Angeles, where he served as the personal trainer and boxing coach for the actor Mickey Rourke. His stable there included Australian heavyweight Justin Fortune, who he brought to Dublin in 1995 to fight Lennox Lewis at The Point.
One night during that Dublin visit Freddie and I went out for dinner, and were joined by Steve Collins. A few months later, when Collins split with Barry Hearn, he found himself in search of a trainer. When I suggested Freddie, Stevie jumped at the idea, so I suppose I was indirectly responsible for midwifing an arrangement that endured for the rest of Collins's fighting career.
Fortune's fourth-round TKO loss to Lewis more or less represented the apex of his own boxing career, but for the past several years he has ably served Roach as his assistant, maintaining the day-to-day operation of his Hollywood gym when Freddie is on the road - which is often.
In the past year Roach has racked up some serious frequent-flyer miles. In July he was in the Philippines for Pacquiao's third-round knockout of Emmanuel Lucero. From there it was off to Austria and Wladimir Klitschko's training camp in Kitzbuehel. Roach trained the Ukrainian giant (whose confidence had been shaken by his loss to Corrie Sanders) and got him back on track for a KO over Fabio Eduardo Moli in late August.
Roach's roster of world champions is now closing in on 20, and next spring he will take a break to marry his long-time fiancée, the former US Olympian and American triple-jump record-holder Sheila Hudson. The couple haven't set a date yet, but we're advising against the fourth weekend in April, when Freddie will likely be otherwise engaged. He should - and will, if I have anything to say about it - be picking up the John FX Condon/Eddie Futch Award from the boxing writers in New York that night.
