DALLAS, Texas – Freddie Roach and Manny Pacquiao have never spoken about Roach's battle with Parkinson's disease but there is a candid conversation the trainer and boxer expect to have one day.

When Roach was nearing the end of his welterweight boxing career in 1986, he was called into the office of then legendary trainer Eddie Futch.

Futch told Roach it was time to hang up the gloves. It was a conversation Roach didn't want to hear.

"It made me cry," Roach said Thursday. "I got mad at him and said 'Why don't you retire.'

"I said 'this is all I have done my whole life. What am I going to do with myself?'

"He said 'I was taking too many punches and that there was a decline in my performances.' I was 26 years old. He was right."

Roach, who has been Pacquiao's trainer for the past eight years, has for several years been battling Parkinson's syndrome which doctors say probably is the result of his own boxing career.

Asked how much the 31-year-old Pacquiao knows about Roach's health problem, the four-time trainer of the year said, "He (Pacquiao) has no idea. We don't talk about it."

Roach will guide the heavily-favoured Pacquiao (50-3-2, 28 KOs) through Saturday's WBO welterweight title fight against Joshua Clottey then hopefully one more mega-fight against American Floyd Mayweather.

This will be Pacquiao's second true welterweight fight and the first defence of the title he won by dominating Miguel Cotto on November 15 in Las Vegas.

Pacquiao plans to enter Philippines politics in May by running for a congressional seat and if elected he would preside over a poverty-stricken community of 400,000.

He has also appeared in a number of Filipino movies and has a platinum music album to his resume.

Pacquiao weighed just 106 pounds for his first fight in 1995 and won his first title in the 112-pound flyweight division.

He has come from a poverty-stricken upbringing in the Philippines to become a world-class boxer who is revered by not just Filipinos but boxing fans the world over.

Pacquiao left his home in General Santos City and lived on the streets in Manila selling candy and sleeping on cardboard boxes on the street corner. He started boxing to earn extra money, fighting for one-dollar purses on makeshift fight cards.

"He wins this fight then he fights Mayweather and he beats Mayweather there would be no need to go on," Roach said. "He will have all the money he needs for the rest of his life.

"He will make movies, sing songs and have fun and he won't get Parkinsons. I have seen one punch change people's lives. It is a dangerous sport and there is no better way to get out than on top.

"He has a junkie fix from singing and acting. Those are much safer jobs. He has more to fall back on than most fighters."