Olympic-bound Yomir Martial made connections with legendary boxing coach Freddy Roach to start training at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles.
Roach toured the martial around the facility, then drove the Filipino middleweight to the gym downstairs for a workout.
“We did four rounds of gloves, followed by working on the heavy bag and the speedbag,” Roach said in an article published on the Boxing Scene website.
Eumir has a lot of strength and talent but we have a lot of work to do. It is a very unusual position to work on the professional debut of a first fighter knowing that we will prepare for the Olympics after he becomes a pro. I really hope we are. The first to bring the title My world and Olympic gold for the Philippines. That would be very special. “
Roach said that Martial’s encounter took him back to the time he first met his favorite student, Manny Pacquiao.
He said, “When Yomir entered through the door to the gym upstairs, I went back to 2001 when Mane first walked through the same door looking for someone to do gloves with.”
“Omer and I had a great time. I told him the story of how Manny and I met and showed him the original arena where we trained for many fights, the dressing room that Manny used in the original part of the gym, and we had a nice talk about what we expected from each other.”
Martial said training under Roach was a dream come true.
“I felt like I was following in Mane’s footsteps when Freddie was giving me a tour of the original part of the Wild Card and telling me stories about training with Manny,” he said.
“Working with Freddie was a great learning experience. I can’t wait to return to our next session.”
He earned his ticket for the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2021 in March by winning all four of his matches in the Olympic qualifiers for Asia and Oceania in Amman, Jordan.
Last December, he won the gold medal at the 30th Southeast Asian Games as well as the silver at the World Boxing Championships last year.
