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Trainer Freddie Roach dismissed the various distractions that hit Manny Pacquiao’s training regimen since pitching camp in this, the country’s summer Capital three years ago and four fights prior to his next.
“It’s always been like that since we started training here. It’s always been an issue. Typhoons, social commitments, etc. “It’s part becoming a part of our lucky charm,” he said with a smile yesterday, a rest day.
A day before last Saturday, Pacquiao drove to Manila, this time to attend with his family the birthday celebration of five-year-old daughter Princess cancelling his scheduled workout on the road and at the Shape Up boxing gym inside the Cooyeesan Hotel.
Last week marking a fortnight of his three week stay here, the wrath of typhoon “Pedring,” lashed out the entire Luzon,” likewise, cancelled several of his roadworks.
“Well, in the first place, Manny is a family man. It’s within his right to join the celebration of his daughter. Secondly, that kind of distraction is already in the calendar,” he told this writer. . “No distraction really as far as the training schedule is concerned. We’ve been expecting these things to happen and we already have prepared remedies to offset them,” Roach assured.
And if Pacquiao, who is here to prepare for his coming Act three of his trilogy with Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez, playing basketball is the most effective way to make up for whatever mileage he lost on the road.
World’s pound-for-pound king was heard saying instead of swimming, which strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza prefers, he wants his second love substitutes for his failure to hit the road. He’s been playing the game nightly since pitching camp here, which Roach consented een if he disapproves of.
As in the sparring department, Roach what has been started Thursday last week, the frequency will be increased to five rounds instead of four in his three previous skirmishes with lightweight contender Jorge Linares.
“No addition yet. It’s still very early in the game and I don’t want to hurry things up,” he said. We have to be careful. I don’t want to push him hard. Burning out is one of the things I don’t want to happen here.”
“I just want to maintain what we’ve started here. This part of the training is actually for Linares who’s fighting for the world lightweight championship on October 15,” he disclosed. “Truth is, Manny has offered this phase of preparation to Linares. Although they will both benefit for this, Linares stand to get more from Manny. Linares needs this more than Manny,” the four-time ‘trainer of the year’ said.
Cooyeesan Hotel
Two-division champion Gerry Penalosa trained here once. So did fellow two-weight belt holder Nonito Donaire Jr.
Barely a year after the two Filipino world titlists, Manny Pacquiao, then only a six-division titleholder, followed using the Shape Up boxing gym as his training camp en route to winning two more weight categories and becoming the only fighter in the planet to crown himself kingpin in eight weight categories.
Cooyeesan Hotel, a giant figure of infrastructure along Naguillian Road here, has become Manny Pacquiao’s permanent home whenever he’s in town vacationing or preparing for a fight.
“To become a world champion s fighter worth his salt needs high-altitude training,” Pacquiao once told this writer. “And speaking of high-altitude preparation, there’s no substitute for Baguio if you happen to be in the country.”
“What you only need is a gym that has everything. A boxing ring, the balls, the bags, all those stuffs. And Cooyeesan Hotel fits all those needs, That’s why we’ve been here the past several years,” the World Boxing Organization welterweight belt-owner said.
And since Pacquiao pitched camp in the Pines City, Cooyeesan has become a grand dame of a sports complex in Baguio, eclipsing all the existing sports arenas here.
The vast 3,500 square meter former vacant lot not only has a boxing gym, but a basketball court, a fitness and an indoor badminton court as well. A shopping mall stood in the property now managed and ran by brothers Roger, Rodrigo and Anson Tiu Co.
But while all three are captives of basketball, never did they realized that the place, transformed into a hotel cum sports complex, will become more popular as a boxing mecca to no less than the most exposed athlete in the world.
And no one from among the thousands of passers-by using the Naguillian Road in going to and from Baguio since it was bought by the trios grandmother Coo Yee San in 1970 that they were looking at history. It was actually the Pacman’s boyhood friend and now assistant trainer Buboy Fernandez who discovered the place through Penalosa, Donaire and broadcaster Chino Trinidad.
“Naghahanap noon si Manny ng lugar para sa kanyang high-altitude training noong naghahanda siya kay (Miguel) Cotto,” Fernandez recalled. “Katatanong-katatanong ko, umabot ako kay Chino na nagsabing nag-train daw doon si Gerry at Nonito (Manny was then looking for a place fit for high-altitude training against Cotto. I was able to talk to Chino who told me about the place having been a venue where Gery and Nonito once trained).”
“I saw the place to be an ideal for a training camp. From your room upstairs, you just go down several floors and the gym is already there. Walang gaanong distractions .” Buboy said.
Besides the hotel and the sports complex, the Cooyeesan edifice also houses an English school, a supermarket, eateries, gift shops and a bank, among other commercial establishments.
Plan, according to Anson, the youngest of the Tiu Co sportsmen brothers, is to construct a sports complex in a six-hectare family-owned property in Barangay irisan, Baguio, where boxing and other sports promotions could be held.
“Since we’re already in sports, we might as well go full throttle in sports promotion as the family’s share in giving our “kababayans” a source of entertainment they want,” Anson said.
