Freddie Roach on Khan (and sparring with Pacquaio)
Posted: 17 Nov 2008, 05:17
Great article in the Observer by Kevin Mitchell on Khan in the Roach camp...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/no ... han-boxing
Every day, when Amir Khan leaves his apartment at 1555 Vine St, John Wayne is waiting for him. As the boy from Bolton works his way south down Vine towards Sunset Boulevard, he passes Pat O'Brien, who could fight a bit, and June Allyson, who had no wish to but who knew guys who thought they could, including the Duke. Along the way, Khan might be aware of Mel Torme, of Stevie Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, of Keenan Wynn, Perez Brado, Gale Storm and Loretta Lynn, actors, singers and forgotten stars from long ago, immortalised in brass and concrete plaques embedded in the grubby streets of Hollywood.
There is no reason Amir, 21, should be even vaguely aware over whom he is stepping on his way to work at the Wild Card gym. His mind is on more serious things. He is a kid of the new millennium and, while this is a nation and a city that trades on shimmering illusions, his is a sport and a business that does not accommodate such foolishness.
Freddy Roach is no seller of dreams. First, he is Khan's new coach and a man the kid can trust. Amir has to reciprocate this faith or they are doomed. If Roach cannot rebuild his glittering career, which the hitherto unknown Colombian hitter Breidis Prescott splintered so spectacularly in Manchester in September, Khan might as well pack up and go home.
On the plus side, Roach's perspective on life and boxing is shaped by the reality of the Parkinson's Disease that racks his once vibrant body; he has no time or inclination for the usual pretences. All he says and does he means.
For the moment, the signs are encouraging for the partnership. The punches given and taken are not staged or feigned. There is no place for actors in this rough bit of Hollywood. If ever there was an environment in which a rocked boxing star might rediscover his swagger it is this sweaty gym on Vine Street.
The walls are plastered with the usual posters and photos, some more significant than others. Just inside the door is a small plaque, for Barbara Roach, boxing's first female judge. She is the mother of Freddy, former fighter and since lauded as among the game's premier professors, and his brother Jack. They were two of five sluggers in the family. Freddy, who is famous and doing well, bought Barbara a house in Las Vegas. He still lives next door to the gym here in LA. The fighting pedigree of the Roaches, not to mention Freddy's sincerity, is unquestioned.
Freddy boxed (wildly but bravely) for, was trained by and later studied under Eddie Futch, in the eyes of many knowledgeable wiseacres the finest tutor in the history of the sport. Futch sparred with Joe Louis and trained several world champions, including Joe Frazier and Riddick Bowe. Khan knows he is in a good place, if albeit by accident.
He acknowledges that, had Prescott not knocked him out in 58 seconds, he might have continued on the path then designated for him and, somewhere up the road, would have encountered a similar monster in an altogether more important setting. As it transpired he had to shed his Cuban coach of the briefest acquaintance, Jorge Rubio, and hooked up with Roach.
'I'm not going to diss him,' Khan says of Rubio. 'I blame myself. I think the only thing he lacked was experience. Everything in the last fight was a bit of a rush, with the Sky deal and everything. The opponent was named and we didn't know much about him. But I'm not blaming Rubio for picking him because if we'd won the fight, he'd have been a genius, you know what I mean?'
Not really. Rubio was a poor appointment, a trainer whose English was rudimentary, attached to a young fighter who needed detailed explanations of a game plan for a seriously dangerous opponent. Still, that is history. And Khan survived, even if his reputation was scratched a bit.
He says: 'People are going to ask, "How's he going to come back from a defeat like that?" In a way, the loss was meant to happen. If it hadn't happened I wouldn't have been sparring with Manny [Pacquiao, the world lightweight champion and acknowledged as the best, pound-for-pound, in the world], wouldn't have been here with Freddy. I have taken the sport more seriously. That's given me a kick. There's no slacking off, knocking someone out, and thinking you're going to become a world champion in the next fight.'
Which, of course, is exactly what Khan used to think. He was not so much a young man in a hurry, as a whirlwind heading for a collision with a rockface. His promoter, allegedly, advised patience. Finally, he has found it, out of the ring and inside it - as Roach explains.
'Manny Pacquiao,' Roach says, 'picks things up very quickly; when I trained Oscar De La Hoya [whom Pacquiao fights on 6 December], he picked things up slowly - not that it's good or bad, it's just the way it is. With Amir, some of the things are being absorbed in sparring, some not. So he's a little bit in the middle.
'He's getting better at it, he's making better choices, but sometimes he gets excited. Like I was working on timing moves today, counter shots. He can't be aggressive and explosive when he loads up with those. They are calculated moves. You've got to set them up. And you can't wait for them to happen because you end up waiting all day and then you've lost the round. So you've got to either make them happen with your jab, or you feint, use head movement. You can't just get in there and try to kill the guy. That's not going to work.
'I've been getting him to look for the openings behind the jab because, I've got to tell you, he's got a beautiful jab. He's got a better jab than De La Hoya. I mean that. Why not use it? The thing is, he's got that great tool, and I've seen jabs win world titles. Larry Holmes, Sonny Liston. Without the jab, they would have been ordinary fighters. I told Amir, with your jab, you should dictate the pace of the fight and, when you're ready to knock him out, we'll knock the guy out with the right hand. But you have to set it up with the jab.'
But what about that chin, the one that has let Amir down three times as a professional and once as an amateur?
'Well... some guys have better chins than other guys, it's true. But the thing is I think a lot of it has to do with confidence, conditioning and mental state. Confidence is a big thing. You know, he got thrown a right hand, he walked into one. Anybody can get knocked out in this game. I thought it was impossible one time. I had 150 amateur fights, 27 pro fights, I'd never been down, I'd never been hurt, then all of a sudden my ass hit the ground. I said, "How the fornicate did I get here?" It can happen to anybody.
'Some guys roll over and die. Some guys come back and get better. The thing is I think he got in a bad position and he let himself get hit. It was more him coming into the punch, meeting each other - so we're trying to perfect that so it doesn't happen again. It was a common mistake that he made. A lot of times a guy goes in with a lead right hand; he didn't set it up with the jab like he's supposed to. Manny Pacquiao was knocked out twice before he became world champion. So you can't count Amir out.'
The fighter looks to have recovered. His demeanour is calm, his youthful confidence intact. He has a major task in front of him only in terms of reshaping his own boxing; he's not worried too much about the wider perception of his frailty, because he knows, in the ring, it is down to him to prove he can do it.
Gym rats in the Wild Card are impressed, including Dean 'Irish Lightning' Byrne, an unbeaten Dublin light-welterweight campaigning with ambition in America. 'He is special. He is so fast,' Byrne says. 'And that jab, it is something.'
Khan's jab, in fact, has been the talk of the gym since he arrived a month ago - and Roach is delighted to have Khan sparring with Pacquiao ahead of his monumental showdown with De La Hoya.
'It just happened by accident,' Roach says. 'I was working the mitts with him and I saw how fast he really was with that jab and I said, you know what, it will do a world of confidence for him, to get in with Pacquiao and hold his own - which I expected him to do, I wasn't sure - but he did better than hold his own. So I was very happy.
'Manny appreciates the quality of the sparring, and there's a little bit of an ego thing, always in boxing. Amir usually gets the best of Manny at the beginning, and Manny usually gets the best at the end, because he wears him down a little bit. But Manny's learning how to deal with the speed of the jab - and this is the important part for Manny - and Amir is holding his own with the world champion and doing well with him.'
Pacquiao agrees. 'Too fast!' he says of Khan's left lead. 'He is going to be a great fighter, believe me.'
Roach has plenty of work left to do with Khan, but, as the fighter himself acknowledges, a trainer of that calibre would not waste time on a boxer he did not believe would repay his time and commitment. The subtleties of Roach's work are a joy to behold.
'I was also working with him on a left hook,' Roach says, 'a little counter shot. Because he has so much speed, he can do this. When he's facing someone slower than him, which happens a lot with him, when they throw a lazy jab out there, he can let go a hook over the top of the jab, with his elbow higher. He delivers it actually when the jab starts to come back [to the opponent's shoulder]. It's a timing shot, a very calculated shot. It was one of the favourite moves of my trainer, Eddie Futch.'
Roach can't be in Khan's corner for his 6 December comeback fight, in London against the rugged, 34-year-old Irishman Oisin Fagan, but he is sending a second familiar not just with the territory but the demands of the business.
Gary Stretch was last seen in a major British fight the night Chris Eubank, cut and near to being pulled out, had him struggling on the ropes in the sixth round at Earl's Court in 1991. It was one of only two losses in Stretch's distinguished career before he left for Hollywood, where he has beavered away at acting ever since.
So, I ask him which was harder: boxing or acting? 'Working for Freddy,' he says of his former trainer. 'But at least he pays you. It's a similar profession, I think, in many ways: masses of prep, bell rings, moment to moment, masses of prep, ropes, camera, action, moment to moment. It's a show. If you're an outstanding actor, you work and, if you're not, you don't. If you're an exciting fighter, you sell tickets. Let me tell you, this kid is an exciting fighter.'
With excitement comes risk. Khan gambled and lost against Prescott. He has a chance now, with the best possible preparation, to find a way back.
'The kid is trying hard,' Roach says. 'He's showing no signs of the knockout in my gym. All the sparring partners, he does well with. He's taken some big shots, he's given some big shots. When he gets hit with the big shot, I tell him why. The thing about him is that he understands. He's a smart kid. If you understand it, you can make the adjustment much more easily. If you don't know why it's happening, then it's hard.
'Sometimes I forget that he's 21 years old. He's a baby really. He's a world-class fighter, but he's still very young - with a lot of talent and, I think, with a bright, bright future.'
Amir packs his kit, shakes hands with his army of new admirers and heads home, just a few hundred yards up Vine, stepping over John Wayne and back into the warmth of his family in his new and temporary haven. You get the feeling he is handling it just about right.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/no ... han-boxing
Every day, when Amir Khan leaves his apartment at 1555 Vine St, John Wayne is waiting for him. As the boy from Bolton works his way south down Vine towards Sunset Boulevard, he passes Pat O'Brien, who could fight a bit, and June Allyson, who had no wish to but who knew guys who thought they could, including the Duke. Along the way, Khan might be aware of Mel Torme, of Stevie Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, of Keenan Wynn, Perez Brado, Gale Storm and Loretta Lynn, actors, singers and forgotten stars from long ago, immortalised in brass and concrete plaques embedded in the grubby streets of Hollywood.
There is no reason Amir, 21, should be even vaguely aware over whom he is stepping on his way to work at the Wild Card gym. His mind is on more serious things. He is a kid of the new millennium and, while this is a nation and a city that trades on shimmering illusions, his is a sport and a business that does not accommodate such foolishness.
Freddy Roach is no seller of dreams. First, he is Khan's new coach and a man the kid can trust. Amir has to reciprocate this faith or they are doomed. If Roach cannot rebuild his glittering career, which the hitherto unknown Colombian hitter Breidis Prescott splintered so spectacularly in Manchester in September, Khan might as well pack up and go home.
On the plus side, Roach's perspective on life and boxing is shaped by the reality of the Parkinson's Disease that racks his once vibrant body; he has no time or inclination for the usual pretences. All he says and does he means.
For the moment, the signs are encouraging for the partnership. The punches given and taken are not staged or feigned. There is no place for actors in this rough bit of Hollywood. If ever there was an environment in which a rocked boxing star might rediscover his swagger it is this sweaty gym on Vine Street.
The walls are plastered with the usual posters and photos, some more significant than others. Just inside the door is a small plaque, for Barbara Roach, boxing's first female judge. She is the mother of Freddy, former fighter and since lauded as among the game's premier professors, and his brother Jack. They were two of five sluggers in the family. Freddy, who is famous and doing well, bought Barbara a house in Las Vegas. He still lives next door to the gym here in LA. The fighting pedigree of the Roaches, not to mention Freddy's sincerity, is unquestioned.
Freddy boxed (wildly but bravely) for, was trained by and later studied under Eddie Futch, in the eyes of many knowledgeable wiseacres the finest tutor in the history of the sport. Futch sparred with Joe Louis and trained several world champions, including Joe Frazier and Riddick Bowe. Khan knows he is in a good place, if albeit by accident.
He acknowledges that, had Prescott not knocked him out in 58 seconds, he might have continued on the path then designated for him and, somewhere up the road, would have encountered a similar monster in an altogether more important setting. As it transpired he had to shed his Cuban coach of the briefest acquaintance, Jorge Rubio, and hooked up with Roach.
'I'm not going to diss him,' Khan says of Rubio. 'I blame myself. I think the only thing he lacked was experience. Everything in the last fight was a bit of a rush, with the Sky deal and everything. The opponent was named and we didn't know much about him. But I'm not blaming Rubio for picking him because if we'd won the fight, he'd have been a genius, you know what I mean?'
Not really. Rubio was a poor appointment, a trainer whose English was rudimentary, attached to a young fighter who needed detailed explanations of a game plan for a seriously dangerous opponent. Still, that is history. And Khan survived, even if his reputation was scratched a bit.
He says: 'People are going to ask, "How's he going to come back from a defeat like that?" In a way, the loss was meant to happen. If it hadn't happened I wouldn't have been sparring with Manny [Pacquiao, the world lightweight champion and acknowledged as the best, pound-for-pound, in the world], wouldn't have been here with Freddy. I have taken the sport more seriously. That's given me a kick. There's no slacking off, knocking someone out, and thinking you're going to become a world champion in the next fight.'
Which, of course, is exactly what Khan used to think. He was not so much a young man in a hurry, as a whirlwind heading for a collision with a rockface. His promoter, allegedly, advised patience. Finally, he has found it, out of the ring and inside it - as Roach explains.
'Manny Pacquiao,' Roach says, 'picks things up very quickly; when I trained Oscar De La Hoya [whom Pacquiao fights on 6 December], he picked things up slowly - not that it's good or bad, it's just the way it is. With Amir, some of the things are being absorbed in sparring, some not. So he's a little bit in the middle.
'He's getting better at it, he's making better choices, but sometimes he gets excited. Like I was working on timing moves today, counter shots. He can't be aggressive and explosive when he loads up with those. They are calculated moves. You've got to set them up. And you can't wait for them to happen because you end up waiting all day and then you've lost the round. So you've got to either make them happen with your jab, or you feint, use head movement. You can't just get in there and try to kill the guy. That's not going to work.
'I've been getting him to look for the openings behind the jab because, I've got to tell you, he's got a beautiful jab. He's got a better jab than De La Hoya. I mean that. Why not use it? The thing is, he's got that great tool, and I've seen jabs win world titles. Larry Holmes, Sonny Liston. Without the jab, they would have been ordinary fighters. I told Amir, with your jab, you should dictate the pace of the fight and, when you're ready to knock him out, we'll knock the guy out with the right hand. But you have to set it up with the jab.'
But what about that chin, the one that has let Amir down three times as a professional and once as an amateur?
'Well... some guys have better chins than other guys, it's true. But the thing is I think a lot of it has to do with confidence, conditioning and mental state. Confidence is a big thing. You know, he got thrown a right hand, he walked into one. Anybody can get knocked out in this game. I thought it was impossible one time. I had 150 amateur fights, 27 pro fights, I'd never been down, I'd never been hurt, then all of a sudden my ass hit the ground. I said, "How the fornicate did I get here?" It can happen to anybody.
'Some guys roll over and die. Some guys come back and get better. The thing is I think he got in a bad position and he let himself get hit. It was more him coming into the punch, meeting each other - so we're trying to perfect that so it doesn't happen again. It was a common mistake that he made. A lot of times a guy goes in with a lead right hand; he didn't set it up with the jab like he's supposed to. Manny Pacquiao was knocked out twice before he became world champion. So you can't count Amir out.'
The fighter looks to have recovered. His demeanour is calm, his youthful confidence intact. He has a major task in front of him only in terms of reshaping his own boxing; he's not worried too much about the wider perception of his frailty, because he knows, in the ring, it is down to him to prove he can do it.
Gym rats in the Wild Card are impressed, including Dean 'Irish Lightning' Byrne, an unbeaten Dublin light-welterweight campaigning with ambition in America. 'He is special. He is so fast,' Byrne says. 'And that jab, it is something.'
Khan's jab, in fact, has been the talk of the gym since he arrived a month ago - and Roach is delighted to have Khan sparring with Pacquiao ahead of his monumental showdown with De La Hoya.
'It just happened by accident,' Roach says. 'I was working the mitts with him and I saw how fast he really was with that jab and I said, you know what, it will do a world of confidence for him, to get in with Pacquiao and hold his own - which I expected him to do, I wasn't sure - but he did better than hold his own. So I was very happy.
'Manny appreciates the quality of the sparring, and there's a little bit of an ego thing, always in boxing. Amir usually gets the best of Manny at the beginning, and Manny usually gets the best at the end, because he wears him down a little bit. But Manny's learning how to deal with the speed of the jab - and this is the important part for Manny - and Amir is holding his own with the world champion and doing well with him.'
Pacquiao agrees. 'Too fast!' he says of Khan's left lead. 'He is going to be a great fighter, believe me.'
Roach has plenty of work left to do with Khan, but, as the fighter himself acknowledges, a trainer of that calibre would not waste time on a boxer he did not believe would repay his time and commitment. The subtleties of Roach's work are a joy to behold.
'I was also working with him on a left hook,' Roach says, 'a little counter shot. Because he has so much speed, he can do this. When he's facing someone slower than him, which happens a lot with him, when they throw a lazy jab out there, he can let go a hook over the top of the jab, with his elbow higher. He delivers it actually when the jab starts to come back [to the opponent's shoulder]. It's a timing shot, a very calculated shot. It was one of the favourite moves of my trainer, Eddie Futch.'
Roach can't be in Khan's corner for his 6 December comeback fight, in London against the rugged, 34-year-old Irishman Oisin Fagan, but he is sending a second familiar not just with the territory but the demands of the business.
Gary Stretch was last seen in a major British fight the night Chris Eubank, cut and near to being pulled out, had him struggling on the ropes in the sixth round at Earl's Court in 1991. It was one of only two losses in Stretch's distinguished career before he left for Hollywood, where he has beavered away at acting ever since.
So, I ask him which was harder: boxing or acting? 'Working for Freddy,' he says of his former trainer. 'But at least he pays you. It's a similar profession, I think, in many ways: masses of prep, bell rings, moment to moment, masses of prep, ropes, camera, action, moment to moment. It's a show. If you're an outstanding actor, you work and, if you're not, you don't. If you're an exciting fighter, you sell tickets. Let me tell you, this kid is an exciting fighter.'
With excitement comes risk. Khan gambled and lost against Prescott. He has a chance now, with the best possible preparation, to find a way back.
'The kid is trying hard,' Roach says. 'He's showing no signs of the knockout in my gym. All the sparring partners, he does well with. He's taken some big shots, he's given some big shots. When he gets hit with the big shot, I tell him why. The thing about him is that he understands. He's a smart kid. If you understand it, you can make the adjustment much more easily. If you don't know why it's happening, then it's hard.
'Sometimes I forget that he's 21 years old. He's a baby really. He's a world-class fighter, but he's still very young - with a lot of talent and, I think, with a bright, bright future.'
Amir packs his kit, shakes hands with his army of new admirers and heads home, just a few hundred yards up Vine, stepping over John Wayne and back into the warmth of his family in his new and temporary haven. You get the feeling he is handling it just about right.
