Pacquiao-Barrera Interviews

Dan Rafael: Do you think - I mean, do you do ever use the first fight anyway when you talk to Manny about how to approach the second fight or do you try to put that out of his mind so he doesn’t get over confident because of the fact that he won that first fight so handily? I mean, it’d be one - it’d be a different matter if it was a very close fight I guess is what I’m saying.

Freddie Roach: It was. I do watch that fight a couple of times just to, you know, just refresh my memory of the attack and how we handle him and how it worked and so forth. And I watched tapes of his last couple fights also just to see the difference in style and so forth.

And, you know, Marco has become much more of a counter puncher now and wants to fight at a slow pace. And basically we just can’t let that happen.

Dan Rafael: And let me ask Manny one other question. Manny you know this fight would not have happened had Top Rank and Golden Boy not been able to settle their differences, many of which were related to this situation that you had with your own contract.
How happy are you or relieved are you that that mess is over with and whatever happened that you were able to now get the highest profile fights possible because of the settlement?

Manny Pacquiao: Well I’m happy that the fight goes through and everything is going great.

Salvador Rodriguez: Manny can you explain your strategy for the fight with Barrera on October 6. And do you find any difference between the fight in 2003 and for this year?

Manny Pacquiao: I think there’s some difference on this side because I’m favored now - I’m favored on this fight and the last fight I’m underdog so that’s the difference. Our fighting styles might be different this time too

Salvador Rodriguez: Is there any difference with your style? You are very safe, very aggressive, these have a you go to the front. Yeah. But which difference do you found within the fight in 2003 and 2007. This Barrera has a (unintelligible) troubles, many (unintelligible) troubles and Barrera is now focused on you. What about you?

Manny Pacquiao: Well I’m able to fight. I’m always focused in my fight and, you know, I don’t want to, you know, make many excuses after the fight. And that’s why I always put myself in 100% condition and get ready and to do the fight.

Salvador Rodriguez: Yeah and this for Freddie. Freddie can you explain us something about the training of Manny Pacquiao. Any difference between LA and Philippines please?

ddie Roach: You know, give us a ring and a place to train and we have no difference in the two spots. We had a great training camp. We brought the right sparring partners in for the fight. We had great sparring. Great camp.

And the heat and humidity was very, very hot and hard to work in the heat of course but it prepared us for the fight because it’s going to be a hot fight and given with the lights and so forth for the TV. And Manny just, you know, I’m not worried about Barrera at all. I just put Manny at his best and I think Manny’s best will do the job.

Salvador Rodriguez: And the next question is can you tell me your pick for the October 6 please including Bob Arum please?

Bob Arum: I think that it’ll be a great fight. It’ll be a very competitive fight. And I look for Manny to win by a stoppage in the late rounds.

Freddie Roach: And I agree with Bob. I think it’s going to be a great fight till it ends. Marco’s a very tough opponent and he’s very resilient. He’ll fight hard, but I think Manny will catch him in the late rounds and it’ll be great - it’ll be really hard fight until that happens.

Manny Pacquiao: Now for me I just do my best to give a good fight and to make people happy. And I want to everybody enjoy and happy in that fight.

Steve Carp:: Could you talk a little bit about these so called distractions that you’ve dealt with during your Philippines training and how you seem to thrive in the midst of all this chaos with people pulling at you?

Manny Pacquiao: There’s no distraction when we train in the Philippines. Like Freddie said that during my training I’m very focused and concentrating to the fight and to our training.

Bob Arum: Steve this is Bob. You have to understand that Manny is so huge in the Philippines that they write about him every day and they look for things to write. Everything gets magnified out of all proportions. A lot of things that you read are just not true. And Manny and Freddie both told me that there was no distractions in training for this fight.

Steve Carp: But I know Manny’s got a lot of endeavors Bob whether it’s owning a basketball team, whether it was his run for Congress, whether it’s his charitable endeavors, he does have a lot of people pulling at him. And I just want to ask Manny if he thrives in that kind of environment where he’s constantly busy with things related to his boxing.

Freddie Roach: I can answer that pretty well because one thing about Manny is once, you know, once we start boxing camp, nothing takes place. Nothing’s more important to Manny. And once he starts training for a fight, there’s no distractions whatsoever. It’s a 100% fight. He sleeps, he goes to bed at 9:00 at night.

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