The May 2 superfight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will be great for the sport of boxing, no matter what the outcome, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach said on Friday.
Speaking ahead of the weigh-in for his charge Zou Shiming’s world title fight against IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng on Saturday in Macau, Roach said he expected the boxing’s popularity to surge on the back of the huge interest in the fight.
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Hall of Fame trainer Roach owns the famous Wildcard gym in Los Angeles where Philippines idol and eight-division world champion Pacquiao is currently in training for the Mayweather encounter.
And Roach reckons it will be a very busy place after the two best fighters of a generation finally lock horns in Las Vegas in the richest fight of all time, expected to be worth more than $200 million.
“It’s going to generate a lot of interest in boxing,” Roach told AFP.
“I can see a lot of people are going to be coming in after that fight,” added Roach.
Not that Roach is short of work. Despite battling the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease, he will be in the corner for two other fighters on the Amnat-Zou undercard Saturday, junior middleweight Glen Tapia from the US and China’s junior welterweight Ik Yang.
“I still have a lot of young boxers coming through,” said Roach, despite the rising popularity of competing sports such as mixed martial arts (MMA).
“There’s a total of 22 kids on the team and six who have a chance of winning titles. And there’s also a little girl called Christy, 16 years old and (she has) won the nationals something like five times now. She might be the best fighter in the gym,” added the man who was last week voted US trainer of the year for the seventh time.
The gym won’t be throwing its doors open until after the megafight though. With ‘Pacman’ in training, Wildcard is now under security lockdown as Roach and his team try to plot their way to victory over Mayweather — in secret.
Meanwhile, boxing legend Marvin Halger believes Mayweather’s showdown with Pacquiao will be the “biggest fight in history”, eclipsing his own titanic showdowns.
Hagler’s fabled clash with Sugar Ray Leonard was the superfight of its day — but the massively anticipated showdown between Pacquiao and Mayweather will eclipse it, he says.
“Whether Pacquiao loses in the first round, whether he knocks out Mayweather in the first round, it’s still going to be the biggest fight in history,” said Hagler.
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
Stree
Producer: Maddock Films, Jio Movies
Director: Amar Kaushik
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee
Rating: 3.5
Volunteers offer workers a lifeline
Community volunteers have swung into action delivering food packages and toiletries to the men.
When provisions are distributed, the men line up in long queues for packets of rice, flour, sugar, salt, pulses, milk, biscuits, shaving kits, soap and telecom cards.
Volunteers from St Mary’s Catholic Church said some workers came to the church to pray for their families and ask for assistance.
Boxes packed with essential food items were distributed to workers in the Dubai Investments Park and Ras Al Khaimah camps last week. Workers at the Sonapur camp asked for Dh1,600 towards their gas bill.
“Especially in this year of tolerance we consider ourselves privileged to be able to lend a helping hand to our needy brothers in the Actco camp," Father Lennie Connully, parish priest of St Mary’s.
Workers spoke of their helplessness, seeing children’s marriages cancelled because of lack of money going home. Others told of their misery of being unable to return home when a parent died.
“More than daily food, they are worried about not sending money home for their family,” said Kusum Dutta, a volunteer who works with the Indian consulate.
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz
Director: Kushan Nandy
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bidita Bag, Jatin Goswami
Three stars
MATCH INFO
Delhi Daredevils 174-4 (20 ovs)
Mumbai Indians 163 (19.3 ovs)
Delhi won the match by 11 runs
Test squad: Azhar Ali (captain), Abid Ali, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Haris Sohail, Imam-ul-Haq, Imran Khan, Iftikhar Ahmed, Kashif Bhatti, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Rizwan(wicketkeeper), Musa Khan, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Shan Masood, Yasir Shah
Twenty20 squad: Babar Azam (captain), Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Sohail, Iftikhar Ahmed, Imad Wasim, Imam-ul-Haq, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Musa Khan, Shadab Khan, Usman Qadir, Wahab Riaz
Reading List
Practitioners of mindful eating recommend the following books to get you started:
Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr Lilian Cheung
How to Eat by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Mindful Diet by Dr Ruth Wolever
Mindful Eating by Dr Jan Bays
How to Raise a Mindful Eaterby Maryann Jacobsen
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