Don't sleep on Pacquiao, trainer Roach warns

The term “to throw out” in sports prognosticating means to dismiss a particular result as fluky.

Picture a horseplayer drawing a line through the description of a recent race while studying past performances in the racing form.

Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquiao’s trainer, has a warning for anyone trying to make a case for Miguel Cotto in their Nov. 14 welterweight showdown at the MGM Grand.

If you throw out the results of Pacquiao’s two most recent fights, you’re doing so at your peril.

Even obscure pros have fans in eclectic Vegas

People come to Las Vegas from all over, and they bring their allegiances with them.

During this World Series, for example, plenty of native New Yorkers are talkin’ that street talk here in support of the Yankees, just as others are letting their Philly freak flags fly.

Transplanted fans of the Steelers, Cowboys and nearly every other NFL team show their colors in local sports books on fall weekends.

Sometimes, though, homeland loyalties emerge in more unexpected ways.

Izenberg's final chapters will have Vegas viewpoint

A conversation with one of the greats of the sports journalism business, still writing from his home in the Henderson hills ...

His long friendship with Muhammad Ali has given Jerry Izenberg countless cherished memories.

When Izenberg wrote a column supporting Ali upon his refusal to join the military, though, the trouble started right away.

A bomb threat was called in to Izenberg’s newspaper, the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. Advertisers pulled out. He received envelopes full of hate mail — and worse, though decorum prevents us from getting into details. Vandals smashed the windows of his gray Chevy outside of his home.

The situation wasn’t without its grim humor, however.

Cotto faces test of size, sizzle

In boxing, the attributes of a fighter’s physical strength and his knockout power are not necessarily one and the same.

Thomas Hearns, for instance, remains the prototype of a boxer who possessed one-punch knockout power yet often lacked the formidable body strength of his more muscle-bound opponents. Think of the electrifying knockouts he recorded against Pipino Cuevas and Roberto Duran — and by contrast, later in his career, the way Hearns was bullied on the inside on the way to losing a 12-round decision to Iran Barkley.