Mayweather and Pacquiao fight will be 'great for the sport'
The May 2 superfight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will
be great for the sport of boxing, no matter what the outcome, Pacquiao's
trainer Freddie Roach said on Friday.
Speaking ahead of the weigh-in for his charge Zou Shiming's world
title fight against IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng on Saturday
in Macau, Roach said he expected the boxing's popularity to surge on the
back of the huge interest in the fight.
Hall of Fame trainer Roach owns the famous Wildcard gym in Los
Angeles where Philippines idol and eight-division world champion
Pacquiao is currently in training for the Mayweather encounter.
And Roach reckons it will be a very busy place after the two best
fighters of a generation finally lock horns in Las Vegas in the richest
fight of all time, expected to be worth more than $200 million."It's
going to generate a lot of interest in boxing," Roach told AFP.
"I can see a lot of people are going to be coming in after that
fight," added Roach. Not that Roach is short of work. Despite battling
the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease, he will be in the
corner for two other fighters on the Amnat-Zou undercard Saturday,
junior middleweight Glen Tapia from the US and China's junior
welterweight Ik Yang.
"I still have a lot of young boxers coming through," said Roach,
despite the rising popularity of competing sports such as mixed martial
arts (MMA).
"There's a total of 22 kids on the team and six who have a chance of
winning titles. And there's also a little girl called Christy, 16 years
old and (she has) won the nationals something like five times now. She
might be the best fighter in the gym," added the man who was last week
voted US trainer of the year for the seventh time.
The gym won't be throwing its doors open until after the megafight
though. With 'Pacman' in training, Wildcard is now under security
lockdown as Roach and his team try to plot their way to victory over
Mayweather - in secret. |