Roach Winning Battle of the Egos As Pacquiao Prepares for Hatton

There are four impressive egos ­competing for media attention in Las Vegas this week and Freddie Roach might own the one that has the most bearing on the fight tomorrow night between Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao.

"He loves being the star," the 49-year-old trainer says of Pacquiao, the extraordinary little big man he has been with for eight years and whom he regards to some extent as his creation.

Then he adds: "I like it too, I can't lie to you, being a little bit famous. People want to take pictures with you; you sign autographs. Me and Manny are very similar; we'll usually stop and sign a lot of them."

It might seem odd that anyone would want the autograph of a trainer, however good he is, but the culture of star worship in America extends to anyone who is vaguely attached to celebrity. And Roach is very attached to Pacquiao, whose fame is unquestioned.

Roach also indulges in the American tradition of a trainer talking about his fighter in the first person plural. He makes no distinction between the boxer and himself – they are as one. And he is very proprietorial about the boxers who, for more than 20 years, have knocked on the door of his Wild Card gym in Hollywood like hippies flocking to a guru on a mountain top. There have been several world champions, a few who never made it and even an actor, Mickey Rourke, who as a boxer was a good actor.

Roach was a decent, but reckless, fighter himself and knows the art of performing, knows the trick of persuading someone – in a boxer's case, the three ringside judges – that you are special. If Pacquiao is special, it has something to do with Roach.

While Roach uses the royal "we", ­Hatton has slipped with seeming permanence into the annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person. After four campaigns in this publicity-crazy town, he is caught in the seductive blaze of the klieg lights.

So, too, is his trainer, Floyd Mayweather Sr, whose speciality is poetry that swings between eccentric and lousy – and which he unleashes on Roach at every press conference. For the past week, they have all been performing like trained seals.

Roach is doing so with most conviction, although he looked to have turned the megaphone up too much when he said he would be "disappointed" if Pacquiao did not knock out Hatton inside three rounds, an outlandish suggestion that riled the opposition no end.

"That was to get Floyd going," he says. "I do believe Manny will stop Ricky ­somewhere along the way. I truly believe that. But I know Ricky's resilient and he's going to put up a good fight. Until the end, that is."

Could he do a better job on Hatton than Mayweather has in just one fight? "I believe so," Roach says. "I'm not saying I'm better than Floyd, but I think that my style and Ricky's style would mesh better together. People say there's a rivalry between me and Floyd, but there's not. But I see what he does on [the HBO promotional documentary] 24/7. I see that he's late for training every day. I think he thinks that he's the show., and he doesn't care about the fighter."

He says of Mayweather's habit of pounding Hatton's mid-section with a medicine ball: "I used to do that when I was a kid. I talked to a lot of doctors. It can cause so much damage. Floyd must be trying to kill him. I was watching it and I thought, I don't know if he's just doin' it for TV, but he's gonna break his fuckin' ribs, I swear."

Roach makes these observations ­knowing Hatton will read them. Ricky scours the internet for stories about himself around fight time, and refers often to the fact that most experts have written him off yet again.

Hatton has played the odd mind game himself. He claimed Oscar De La Hoya, his some time business partner, had told him that he wanted Pacquiao to knock him out during their fight in the same MGM Grand ring in December, because he felt so drained by making the weight. The implication was that, even though his opponent was flat and there for the taking, Pacquiao still couldn't knock him out.

"I don't believe that," says Roach. "Oscar did the best he could with what he had. I think Manny Pacquiao could beat Oscar in his prime, because he can't fight southpaws and he can't fight speed."

And who else does he reckon can't fight southpaws? Ricky Hatton.