Manny Pacquiao and trainer Freddie Roach prepare for Joshua Clottey fight, and eye bout with Floyd Mayweather

Manny Pacquiao and trainer FreddieRoach prepare for Joshua Clottey fight, and eye bout with Floyd Mayweather

If you're an aging professional athlete, there are plenty of sports where you
can hang around without endangering yourself. It's just that this isn't one of
them. You hang on too long here, you leave damaged. The man with the tremors in
his left hand knows it. When especially tired or under stress, his entire body
quivers like a tuning fork. He has Parkinson's disease. A few people pleaded
with him to stop fighting, but he didn't listen. "Fighters don't want to quit,"
he says.
Nowadays a trainer, 50-year-old Freddie Roach keeps a careful eye
on Manny Pacquiao, the best of his fighters, perhaps the best fighter on the
planet, a dazzling pugilist he cares about like a son. He loves him, love being
the word he never uses -- too soft for the maniacal world of a boxing gym. But
it is the right word; it accounts for his ferocity when it comes to all things
Pacquiao. At 5-6 1/2 , with his toothy grin, close-set eyes and dark-framed
glasses, Roach looks like a pint-sized Buddy Holly.