It May End Up Killing You

Hard Fought Lessons From a Life in the Ring

Freddie Roach, Bill Katovsky, Peter Owen Nelson

Foreword by Manny Pacquiao

It May End up Killing You is the inspiring and amusing autobiography of boxing’s greatest trainer, Freddie Roach: an ex-pug living with Parkinson’s, the most famous white man in the Philippines, a formidable street fighter, and a millionaire who slept for years in a makeshift apartment within his Los Angeles gym, The Wild Card.

The book is organized into four parts: Boy, Fighter, Man, and Gray Eminence, beginning with tales of his abusive youth, his own boxing career, and his apprenticeship under legendary trainer Eddie Futch (trainer of Joe Frazier), before moving on to his courageous battle against Parkinson’s Disease, his relationship with Hollywood celebrities (Mickey Rourke, Mark Wahlberg), and his rise to the top of his profession as a trainer for world champions like Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Wladimir Klitchko, and his prized pupil, the pound-for-pound #1 fighter in the world, Manny Pacquiao.

Roach relates the lessons of his life as he learned them over time and muses over how they can each be integrated and applied to strategies for winning. For each chapter Roach writes, connections are drawn to larger themes or settings, enriched with research, interviews, and other anecdotes. Eventually Roach weaves these various life lessons through his work with his signature fighter, Manny Pacquiao, revealing the difference in simply identifying raw talent versus cultivating it, and how both are equally vital to success.

Bill Katovsky

Bill Katovsky, founder of Tri-Athlete Magazine, has completed the Hawaii Ironman twice and is coauthor of Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, which won Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize; and editor of 1,001 Pearls of Runners' Wisdom: Advice and Inspiration for the Open Road, as well as co-founder of the Natural Running Center.