By George Kimball
Last year, Manny Pacquiao raised a few eyebrows when, on the eve of his fight against Miguel Cotto, he made an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” even singing a song on the nationally televised late-night talk show. Given the Cotto result, Pacquiao must now consider Jimmy Kimmel his good luck charm. At least this time he’s not leaving it until so late in the game. On Wednesday - 10 full days before his encounter with Joshua Clottey at Cowboys Stadium - Pacquiao will appear on Kimmel’s show again. His set list has not yet been released. . . .
As if Clottey wasn’t already feeling like a stage prop for the March 13 melodrama, as he prepares to face the world’s top pound-for-pound boxer, his training camp appears to be in total disarray. Prior to last June’s encounter with Cotto, the Ghana native parted company with trainer Kwame Asante over money issues. For the Pacquiao fight, he invited his earlier trainer, Ghanaian Godwin Kotey, back for an encore, but Kotey’s request for a U.S. visa was denied, ruling him out of the corner for the Pacquiao fight. At this point it appears that the chief second for Clottey will be Lenny DeJesus, a full-time locksmith who moonlights as a free-lance cutman, but has no experience overseeing a corner in a bout of this magnitude.
You’d think that with a guaranteed $1.5 million (an amount likely to double with his share of the pay-per-view revenues), Clottey might opt to bring in a more established big gun on a one-shot basis, but it appears to be a matter of trust. Adding to his worries, as Clottey opened camp at a Florida gym last month, he learned that the place had no working hot showers.
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