Marcial steps up Wild Card training

It did not take long for Eumir Felix Marcial to impress Hall-of-Fame trainer Freddie Roach at Wild Card Gym.

After watching the Filipino throw punches, Roach said Marcial “already moves like a pro.”

The southpaw who once broke the jaw of his Singaporean foe to win one of his three Southeast Asian Games gold medals is preparing for his first professional fight this December.

He has been training for 40 days straight—on Wednesday he logged his second sparring session—and already, Marcial is running on Team Pacquiao’s operating system.

“The training is painstaking, but I can’t ask for more; I feel at home,” Marcial, speaking in Filipino, told the Inquirer via a Viber call from Los Angeles.

Marcial said he’s in “high morale,” enjoying the company of the same team, which takes care of world’s only eight-division champ Manny Pacquiao: His mitts are handled by Marvin Somodio. Justin Fortune takes care of his strength training while his needs are being tended to by MP Promotions head Sean Gibbons.

“They are all solid behind me and I feel like all of us are working toward one goal, which is the Olympic gold,” he said. “It gets me motivated that here are people who share the same goal with me.”

He expects his first foray into the pros to be a four-rounder but Marcial could not give the name of his opponent nor the exact date yet. The important thing, according to him, is that he’s in great shape overall.

“I felt that all my possible opponents [in Tokyo] are either in training camps or competing in tournaments. Some are fighting in the pros, too,” he said. “It’s a right decision to get here in the US. Otherwise I would be eating camote back home.”