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Teddy taught him a lot about being a man. Freddie treats his fighters like professionals.
    I asked Freddie to describe how he sees the job of the trainer, in terms of the mental side of things, and he answered simply, in his Boston accent. “My job is to get inside their head. I want to get to where I know what they’re thinking, and they know what I’m thinking. Trust in me. When they have complete trust in you, then they’ll listen to you in the corner, better than some stranger. Make the connection.” That’s all Freddie is going to try to do—connect with his fighter. It’s something he saw the legendary Eddie Futch do, both as a fighter under his tutelage and, later, as an assistant. “Eddie could communicate. He got his point across. He got fighters to trust him.”
    It’s probably why world champions consistently seek Freddie out. They know he isn’t going to give them a lot of grief, that he’s going to get them ready in a professional manner and let them run their own mental show. He wants to get in their head but not to change anything, just to help them see some things that he sees. He’s learned from his own mistakes.
     
    “I skipped the fear because I started so young,” Freddie muttered to me one afternoon, his voice just barely audible, sometimes hoarse, but clear. “I never had fear in a fight until after the first time I got knocked out. Because I had a hundred and fifty amateur fights and twenty-seven pro fights before I got knocked out. I was never even hurt by anybody—I was invincible. Then one day I never saw the punch coming, and I woke up on the floor.” Freddie laughs, smiles, and eyes me sideways through his thick glasses. “I got up, the guy rushed me and put me down again, and fuck, and then the ref stopped the fight.” He shook his head, deeply amused by his younger self’s chagrin. “From that point on, I knew I could be knocked out and that changed my whole game. My attitude. Before that, I would go in reckless. I would take a couple to get mine off, too. But then I knew what could happen, and it made a huge dent in my fighting career. I wasn’t fearless anymore. It put a question mark in my head.” Freddie maintains that was the beginning of the end, the start of the downhill slide of his fighting career. He also broke his hand and had a long layoff, which led to his living a less pure lifestyle, furthering the decline.
    Freddie contrasts this with the example of Manny Pacquiao. Manny is one of Freddie’s most famous charges, a Filipino lightweight with a dynamic style. Manny is the most popular person in the Philippines by far, bigger than any celebrity or politician. He’s considered a national treasure. In an interview, the Philippines’ secretary of the environment said, “Manny Pacquiao is our greatest national resource.”
    Manny’s amazing, an “action” fighter: explosive, strong, ripping fast. His body is a piece of Filipino iron, taut, whiplike. He came to Freddie years ago with a lot of ability, but raw, and Freddie polished him into a gleaming gem, the pound-for-pound king. The bewildering technical display he put on against Oscar de la Hoya showcased all his tools, a master in his prime. And Manny has been stopped, earlier in his career.
    Freddie said, “Manny, he’s been KO’d and he just says ‘There’s always a winner and a loser, tonight just wasn’t my night,’ and that’s a pretty good attitude to have. It didn’t hurt Manny. It made him better. He learned from it, he knows it could happen, and most guys don’t think it could ever happen.”
    Freddie was talking about himself. I asked him more about it, trying to get at the root of it. Why did a loss for Manny become a positive thing and a loss for Freddie become a negative one?
    Freddie said, “Well, first thing is my defense was my offense. When I’m punching you, you can’t punch me. I was a hundred percent attack. When I got knocked down and hurt, when I lost that fight, I just