28.12.06 – By Michael Marley, BoxingConfidential.com: Manny Pacquiao may be committing professional suicide by spurning a better promotional deal from Oscar de la Hoya and Golden Boy but trainer Freddie Roach intends to remain in Pacman’s corner. Roach told me, in a wide-ranging exclusive interview that the popular fighter is being deceived by “a human leech and degenerate” named Michael Koncz who is on the payroll of promoter Bob Arum.
Roach threatened to quit the Pacquiao team once before, in 2004 when Roach refused to work with promoter Murad Muhammad any longer. So the question that naturally arises now is whether the Boston native would remain as Pacman’s boxing tutor if the world champ rejects GBP and remains in the promotional clutches of Arum’s Top Rank..
Roach, who said that Pacquiao has been led astray by a bankrupt Canadian who falsely claims to be a lawyer, is greatly disappointed that Pacquiao has decided to opt for the Top Rank package over the GBP deal. Roach blames Michael Koncz, a mystery man who popped up in boxing first in an ill-fated attempt to get heavyweight contender Ike Ibeabuchi out of prison and back into the ring, for influencing Pacquiao to take the less attractive financial contract.
“I will probably stay in Manny’s corner,” Roach said late Wednesday night. “Arum said to me, “I know what you did, Freddie, but we will work with you.’ I said, ‘Hey, Bob, if you were offered two deals and one was much better would you take the bad one?’ Bob didn’t answer that.
“When I was over there three weeks ago,” Roach said, “I told Manny he never should have signed the second deal (Top Rank). Manny told me, ‘That was a mistake, I know.’ I told him you’ve got to fix that mistake.
“I am going back over there in two weeks. Manny. Erik Morales and I are doing a commercial for San Miguel Beer so I can sit down with Manny then.”
Roach describes Koncz (“I don’t even know if that is his real name”) as a Svengali without portfolio who has completely entrenched himself in Pacman’s daily life even going so far as to sleep on the floor in the champion’s own bedroom at his new seven bedroom mansion in General Santos City.
“This guy is a real degenerate,” Roach said. “He is a leech in every sense of the word. He claims he played pro hockey. He claims he is a lawyer. Then he says he was a law clerk. He went bankrupt with the Ibeabuchi thing, or so he claims, and he is in bankruptcy now. He lost his house in Orange County and I hear his wife and kids had to go back to Canada.
“But the guy definitely weaseled his way into Manny’s life. He speaks as much Tagalog as me, meaning not a word. The guy is sleeping on the floor in Manny’s bedroom. Manny now sleeps in a bed but this guy is right there when he goes to sleep and right there when he wakes up,” Roach said. “He stays with Manny 24/7. I know this character and he is only looking out for himself.”
So how does a bankrupt Canadian move to General Santos City in the Philippines and become Pacman’s personal shadow? Roach has no doubts how.
“He is Bob Arum’s guy. He is there on Bob Arum’s dime and he promised Bob that he would deliver Manny to Top Rank. Arum got him an apartment in Vegas and he paid for it. I asked Bob and he said, ‘No, I only co-signed his lease.’ This guy knows absolutely nothing about boxing.
“Make no mistake, this is a bad guy,” Roach said. “Somehow in Vegas, he got involved or friendly with powerful guys like (political strategist and Ronald Reagan adviser) Sig Rogich and (criminal defense lawyer) David Chesnoff. Those guys seem to know him well. He got Sig involved in the Ibeabuchi thing but when Ike went before the parole board, he showed no remorse (for a rape conviction) and they threw him back in. He met Manny and he started buying him gifts all the time. I said, ‘You don’t buy someone’s friendship like that.'”
So why is the Golden Boy deal so much better than Arum’s? Roach does not hesitate to explain.
“Manny got a good deal from Golden Boy,” Roach said. “He got a good deal in their offer and Manny himself negotiated to make it even better. In Arum’s deal,. the split on the money from promotions is 50-50. In Golden Boy’s deal, the split is 90-10 in favor of Manny. With Golden Boy, they gave him the Filipino TV rights exclusively for all their shows, not just for Manny’s fights. It is for every show Golden Boy does.”
Roach also wanted to clear the air about reports that De La Hoya promised that he would hire him as his trainer. In exchange, Roach had to deliver Pacman to the GBP fold.
“That is 100 percent not true,” Roach said. “I’ve had talks with Oscar at different times in his career about me training him. But they were only talks and the timing was never right. So those might be rumors but I am telling you they are false.”
(Note: I have known Roach for 30 years. I remember when his mother was a boxing judge in Massachusetts. I saw him and his brother Pepper both fight. I remember how Freddie was trained by the great Mr. Eddie Futch and became his training disciple later on. Roach’s father was a tree surgeon who loved boxing. When Freddie came to Vegas in 1976, I was the boxing writer at The Las Vegas Sun. You may not like what Freddie says on occasion but I do know that my fellow Bostonian always gives it you straight and unvarnished.–M.M.)