By Norm Frauenheim
LAS VEGAS – There’s not a day, or even a few hours, when there isn’t a volley of insults between Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Freddie Roach. They sound like natural antagonists, separated by a lifetime of irreparable slights. You could assume that they share only mutual contempt. But you’d be wrong.
Roach and the senior Mayweather are an odd couple, alike in the biggest fight of all, bigger than even Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr.
It’s an alliance they didn’t choose and didn’t want. But life is like that. Cheap shots happen. For Roach, it’s been Parkinson’s, which attacks the central nervous system. For Mayweather Sr, it’s sarcoidosis, a lung disease.
Their response has been almost identical. The fight game is in their DNA. In their blood. It’s what they’ve always done. There was always another dangerous opponent to fight when they were younger. On Saturday night, they’re in opposite corners, Roach for Pacquiao and Mayweather Sr. for his son at the MGM Grand in the biggest fight in decades.
No matter who wins, however, their own personal fights will still be there, a daily battle and similar in a way that transforms lifelong enemies into comrades no matter what they continue to say to and about each other.
Both have gone about the battle the same way everyday.
“I work my ass off,’’ Roach said Thursday.
Mayweather Sr., 62 and a former welterweight, said he has whipped his disease.
“I don’t have sarcoidosis any more,’’ he said
A furious work rate, he said, whipped sarcoidosis, which can affect organs throughout the body. He works at it, sunrise to sunset, in old gyms surrounded by weathered bags, discarded hand wraps and fighters.
For Roach, the fight continues. It always will. Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder. But Roach is stubborn. He battles in a daily fight to keep the symptoms at a standstill.
Daily workouts with fighters at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif., have slowed the symptoms.
“Haven’t shaken in 10 months,’’ said Roach, 54, a featherweight and lightweight from 1978 through 1986 who believes he got Parkinson’s because he fought too long.
Roach takes 15 pills a day to relieve rigidity and control the shaking. He also undergoes epidural injections to alleviate pain from a couple of bulging discs.
“Rigidity is the key,’’ said Roach, a seven-time Trainer of the Year. “People slow down and let it take over. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and don’t feel so good. But once I get to the gym, everything is okay.’’
It’s within the gym that Roach and Mayweather Sr. feel like they can beat just about anybody. And anything.
On Saturday, each vowed that he would beat the other.
“This fight has already been won,’’ said Mayweather’s dad, who continued to call his rival Coach Roach. “We can beat Manny any day, any time, any year, any moment. “…Manny’s best performance was when he got stretched by Juan Manuel Marquez.’’
He even had one of his poems.
“I must confess, I am the best,’’ said Mayweather Sr., still fighting in a way that has kept him and his rival alive.
