Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach and world-class Stength & Conditioning coach Alex Ariza will once again come to blows, but this time, in a court room. After months of failed settlement discussions, Ariza's defamation lawsuit against Roach will now be heading to trial. We're told that, for whatever reason, both Roach and Manny Pacquiao failed to appear at multiple deposition attempts, leaving no other option but to move forward with a jury trial.
In a video interview conducted back in January of 2014, Freddie Roach claimed that during the years that Alex Ariza worked with Manny Pacquiao, he allegedly supplied him with "mystery drinks" that may have contained performance enhancing drugs. "One of the reasons why he doesn't work for me anymore is because I think he's a little shady, you know. He used to give Manny a drink every day before we worked out and I asked him, 'What's in that drink,' and he would never tell me. And I said, 'I need to know what's in that drink because, you know, you're giving it to my fighter and if something goes wrong, I'm gonna get the blame.' In my opinion, he's a little shady, so he's with that camp now and it doesn't surprise me that happened," Roach stated in the video. Immediately after Roach's comments were made public, Ariza quickly denied the allegations and filed the defamation lawsuit.
It's unclear as to why Roach would make accusations that seemingly put his own fighter, as well as himself, under the microscope during the height of their Hall of Fame careers. Nevertheless, he indeed made the explosive allegations, which now also call into the question the work that Ariza did with several other fighters at Wild Card Gym during that 2008 to 2013 timeframe. In those five years, the team of Roach and Ariza seemed like an unbeatable dynamic duo, racking up win after win with high-profile names such as Pacquiao, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and Amir Khan. Since their split, however, the success rate of Roach's fighters has declined, which begs the question, is there some truth to Freddie Roach's allegations?
Keep in mind this isn't the first time that Roach made allegations that he turned a blind eye to one of his fighters that he suspected was using performance-enhancing drugs. "I won't say I didn't know," Roach freely admitted back in March of 2010 when he discussed James Toney testing positive for steroids five years prior. In that same interview, Roach also insinuated that he knew another one of his fighters used steroids. "I think I had one other fighter on steroids also, Justin Fortune. I know he'd been there before," Roach added. Although that second claim went unsubstantiated thanks to a defamation lawsuit filed by Fortune, it should be noted that in a sworn statement, Roach said Fortune admitted to him that he did indeed use performance-enhancing drugs.
As previously stated, both Roach and Pacquiao failed to appear at depositions to tell their side of the story, which seems especially odd for Pacquiao considering that the allegations from his own trainer suggest that he may have indeed been taking banned substances. Assuming he would have denied any knowledge of these "mystery drinks", his deposition would have probably given Ariza more proof that Roach's allegations are false, making it easier to reach a settlement. The 8-division former world champion will now likely have to appear as one of several witnesses during the trial. In fact, we're told that there will be testimony from a number of current and past fighters from Wild Card Gym that very well could reveal some very interesting information.
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