Roach Still Offering Sparring Partners $1,000 if They Can Drop Pacquiao

Freddie Roach, the Hall of Fame trainer for Manny Pacquiao, is still offering sparring partners a fee of $1,000 if they are capable of knocking down the Filipino superstar.

Pacquiao is currently training for a highly anticipated pay-per-view showdown with IBF, WBC welterweight champion Errol Spence – which is set for August 21 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

“Manny doesn’t know that! I’ve always kept it a secret but every sparring partner I hire, I say, ‘You knock him down, I give you a thousand bucks’. And I’ve kept a thousand in my pocket,” Roach told The Sun.

Pacquiao first began working with Roach in 2001, at the trainer’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California.

The 42-year-old eight division world champion has been out of the ring since July 2019, when he won a twelve round split decision over Keith Thurman to capture the WBA welterweight title.

To this day, a larger crowd follows Pacquiao everywhere he goes.

“There’s a little more people in training camp. People love to see Manny Pacquiao and his entourage is getting a little bigger. But then the first day he noticed it was getting a little crowded in the gym, he said, ‘Freddie, can we get rid of some of these people’. I said, ‘Yeah, we can. These are all your people, throw them out!’ Manny cut them right in half, so training camp’s getting better as less people are watching,” Roach said.

“Manny draws a lot of people to this area and so forth but I had to hire security guards and uniformed police officers that have to watch the gate and keep his people away. Because it’s a pretty important fight for Manny and he’s doing really well, he’s fighting one of the best guys out there.”