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Next week, and for years to follow, people driving in the area of Hollywood and Vine will pass a corner shopping center with a sign that says: “Freddie Roach Square.” That will probably trigger a common reaction. Who’s Freddie Roach?
For those who see no sweet science in the sport of boxing, nor have ever considered a ring to be something other than that which you put on a finger, we will tell you.
Roach is a boxing trainer. He is famous for making other people famous. The new sign will go up in a ceremony Sunday between 1-3 p.m. in the parking lot of his gymnasium. The gym is called Wild Card Boxing Club. It is the 30th anniversary of its existence. To the boxing world, it is a cathedral.
It is where Manny Pacquiao trained to become rich and famous. It is where movie stars such as Mark Wahlberg and Mickey Rourke come to get in shape for action movies. It is where Oscar De La Hoya trained for a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr., then lost, but was so emboldened by Roach’s training technique that he told Roach he would never fight another fight without him. Two days later, De La Hoya fired him.
There were days when the hot and sweaty place was shared by nuns and former felons.
The Wild Card is mind-numbing showcase of boxing photos, sweat, noise and hangers-on. It became so crowded that Roach, in the midst of Pacquiao’s long run of success, acquired the property downstairs as an additional gym, and for Manny only. Worked like a charm. There, his star pupil could train with the comparative reduction in decibels down to a 747 on takeoff. Eventually, the boxing media learned lip-reading to do interviews. Overall, the downstairs Wild Card has been a success. The former felon count is down.
Wild Card was where a young, invincible and feared heavyweight star Mike Tyson came to work for a fight and was doing mitts with Roach. “Doing mitts” consists of the trainer deflecting or accepting a series of hard punches from his trainee. The punches are designed to come in a pattern, so the trainer can anticipate them and not get hit.
One day in the Wild Card, Tyson missed the pattern and nailed Roach on the jaw. Roach’s knees buckled, but he didn’t go down. Somebody got a video of the moment, and an infuriated Tyson later demanded that the video never be shown. His image was at stake. By then, Roach was long retired from a career that left him with signs of Parkinson’s and he weighed around 150 pounds. But Tyson couldn’t take him down with one of his best shots.
Roach’s explanation?
“I had a good chin.”
Roach is 65. He grew up in a rough part of Boston, where job choices for boys heading into manhood came down to, for many, bank robbing or boxing. Roach chose the more legal one, but not necessarily the smartest. He had 53 fights, started out 26-1, stopped with a record of 40-13, and says that he was fine until those last six or seven.
One of his trainers was the legendary Eddie Futch, who between lessons in jabbing and ducking told Roach that his best piece of lifetime advice was to “never open your own gym.” So, at age 35, Roach did just that. He asked a bunch of friends to write down possible names for the new gym, saying that in the process he would certainly find a good wild card. Then he named it that.
Opening a gym, despite Futch’s warning, was more a career reality than anything else. Roach was a boxer. He knew boxing. Not a whole lot else.
He tried telemarketing for a while in Las Vegas. “We just got on the phone and lied our ass off,” he says.
He tried tree trimming, but the life of an arborist did not suit him, either. They were men in trees and Roach did not want to be one of them. “I saw a guy lose control of his chain saw and slash his chest,” Roach says, apparently not comparing that to the damage done by a shot to the chin from Mike Tyson.
Over the years, 42 fighters have prepared in Wild Card Gym and gone on to win world titles. Roach, the guy helping them prepare, has been named boxing trainer of the year seven times and was inducted into Boxing’s Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y., in 2012.
The most famous of those 42, of course, is Pacquiao, who walked into the Wild Card one day, asked to “do mitts” with Roach, and went on to win an unprecedented eight division titles.
There may be more. Pacquiao recently lost his re-election bid for his Philippines senate seat and is rumored to be looking for a summer Las Vegas fight. This, of course, is after he retired and is being inducted in the boxing Hall of Fame in June. Go figure.
And, lo and behold, Roach is not ruling out training Pacquiao for this next one, if it happens.
“If he does this fight,” Roach says, “I hope I’m in his corner.”
If not, Roach is a happy man. His gym will be honored with the ceremony Sunday. And alongside him will be his longtime companion, Marie Spivey, whom he married two years ago.
What a wedding it was. They did it in the Wild Card. Freddie was in the blue corner and Marie in the white.
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