Mark’s on the convention trail right now and didn’t have time for this week’s post, and since I dread the idea of missing two straight days (tsk tsk Arto… if only I had another weird photo of you!), I’m going to step in and throw together a 10-minute post about a name that just came to my attention.
In honor of Saturday’s pay per view fight between Emmanuel Dapidran “Manny” Pacquiao (husband of Jinkee, who gets mentioned a lot on this blog) and Brandon Rios, I was reading some coverage about Pacquiao’s legendary trainer Freddie Roach.
Freddie Roach owns the famous Wild Card Boxing Gym in Hollywood, which boasts at least 20 former world champions. The gym is open to the public, which and makes me really embarrassed about the fact that I’ve never once been there.
His 7-2 record came against some questionable opponents. (J/K, LOL! I’ve learned never to rib people whose resume includes a “career knockouts” column! Pepper knows I’m kidding… right?)
Perhaps if I had, I would have run into one of its more famous employees, Freddie’s brother Dominic Pepen “Pepper” Roach.
Pepper is the best-named member of a famous boxing family. His father Paul was New England Featherweight champion and had 33 wins as a professional. In addition to Freddie (who had 40 wins before age 25), Pepper had another brother, Joey, who went 8-3 in his pro career. Pepper fought to a respectable 7-2 pro record, which is 7 more wins than I have in my distinguished pro boxing career.
The “Fighting Roach Brothers” were a fixture in the New England amateur boxing scene, and each went on to a winning professional career. It was a very different era – Freddie, who fought in 53 fights including two world title bouts, never made more than $7500 in a fight. Therefore, the fighting Roach brothers had to work odd jobs to make ends meet before settling in Los Angeles and making the Wild Card Gym the institution that it is.
Joey tragically passed away of a heart attack a few years ago at age 47, and Pepper experienced a stroke in 2011, but quickly recovered and returned to training. It’s hard to keep an old fighter down.
You go, Pepper!
The Blog of Funny Names 
Dave–You sure know how to spice up a post. 😉
Haha, I just laughed out loud in a really awkward place to be laughing out loud. Well done, Fannie! 🙂
My pleasure, as always!
Wish I knew what you were talking about up there what with all that boxing stuff, Dave, but I do like the food-related name 😉 Spicy, as Fannie so cleverly noted.
Good job filling in for Mark. Now I know who to turn to when I need a sub 😉
I’ll take my sub with turkey, lettuce, and avocado, if you please. . .
🙂 A food pun point for Fannie!!!! Sounds like a great sandwich order. I’ll put one in for the same. Dave–can you help us out here? It’s your blog after all. We could all come over to my place for food, but I won’t have anything new out until Wednesday….
How do I serve up digital sandwiches? I know you’ve brought “cake” to Amb’s posts and things like that, but I’m a rookie in this game. Please advise.
‘k, here’s how it’s done: First, you look around to see if anyone is watching. And if it’s clear (or if you don’t care that you’re going to look silly serving food/drink that doesn’t really exist), you (virtually) offer us a sandwich (and a good craft beer, please). Then we take the delicious fare and enjoy and say how great it is. If it’s really good, we’ll ask for more. Now wasn’t that fun? 😉
Best part is it’s not real, so won’t count toward actual calories, etc.
Hmmm… one of these days I’ll have to do a little boxing write-up like I did for baseball. Luckily it doesn’t have a ton of odd stats like baseball so it’s easier to grasp. The hard part is the deeper tactical stuff that I’d say 90% of boxing fans don’t even understand.
pepper roach – an exotic spicy insect?
There was also a great jazz musician named Max Roach!
For whatever that’s worth.
Max Roach, playing something called the Third Eye!
Eeeeeee! I love this: “Roach Brother’s”, but I am mostly still processing my appreciation for the name “Jinkee”…
I’m glad you found so much to appreciate! You’re a true blue funny names lover! Great to have you here!
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